{"id":86,"date":"2011-11-26T03:33:26","date_gmt":"2011-11-26T03:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/?page_id=86"},"modified":"2025-06-17T19:15:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T19:15:28","slug":"86-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/?page_id=86","title":{"rendered":"Nancy Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"When Nancy Wilson arrived in New York City in 1959, she knew what she wanted: to launch a national singing career with John Levy as her manager and Capitol as her record label. She got what she wanted and the rest, as they say, is history. To this day, John Levy remains her manager, and while she retired from extensive touring at the end of 2004, but National Public Radio listeners continue to hear her hosting repeated broadcasts of her Jazz Profiles<\/a> series.<\/p>\n

\"\"Recent awards include: an NAACP Image Award; a 2004 NEA Jazz Master Fellowship award; a 2005 Trumpet Award celebrating African-American achievement a 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP in Chicago; 2 Grammy Awards for her 2004 CD titled R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) amd 2007 Turned To Blue CD, both on MCG Jazz; and an honorary doctorate from Juilliard School of Music to be bestowed in May 2012.\u00a0 For more information, read her bio below.<\/p>\n

NANCY WILSON<\/h4>\n

<h5<>MCG Jazz<\/a> Profile<\/p>\n

\"\"Nancy Wilson blurs the line between jazz singer and pop singer, preferring to be called a “song stylist.”\u00a0 Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, on February 20, 1937, she is younger than Elvis, Little Richard and Esther Phillips, and only a year older than Etta James and Tina Turner.\u00a0 Yet, stylistically speaking, she is worlds away from these rhythm rocking contemporaries.\u00a0 Nancy is more like an earlier generation of vocalists such as Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan or Billy Eckstine.<\/p>\n

At 15, after appearing at a talent show in Columbus, Ohio, Nancy was given her own twice-a-week television show, Skyline Melodies.\u00a0 She worked at the Carolina Club on Prom Night and six months later with the house band. Cannonball Adderley once told her, \u201cIf you ever come to New York give me a call.\u201d He was managed by John Levy, and soon she was signed to Capitol Records.\u00a0 “What I heard that night,” recalled Capitol A&R man Dave Cavanaugh, “was the nasal quality of Dinah [Washington] and the tear of Billie [Holiday].\u00a0 I signed her immediately.”<\/p>\n

An early single, 1961’s “Guess Who I Saw Today,” a marvel of sophistication given the teen tenor of the times, became a staple on jazz radio and in black juke box locations throughout urban America.\u00a0 An album in 1962, Nancy Wilson\/Cannonball Adderley, further raised her jazz profile and provided her with a second juke box hit, an edited-for-45 version of Buddy Johnson’s “Save Your Love For Me.”\u00a0 She also paid tribute to her idol, Little Jimmy Scott, with a much-loved version of “When Did You Leave Heaven.”\u00a0 Nancy’s highest charting Capitol singles, the GRAMMY\u00ae Award-winning “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am” (#11 Pop, 1964) and “You’re As Right As Rain” (#10 R&B, 1974), are highlights in the total of 20 Pop and\/or R&B-charting singles for Capitol.<\/p>\n

The two albums which made Nancy Wilson a household name were Broadway My Way and Hollywood My Way, which are just what the titles imply, current and old tunes from the Great White Way and Tinseltown.\u00a0 Broadway’s standout track was Irving Berlin’s “You Can Have Him,” from Miss Liberty. Nancy the actress wrings every drop of irony out of Berlin’s heartbreakingly ironic lyric.\u00a0 The hit from Hollywood was the aforementioned “When Did You Leave Heaven,” the Richard Whiting-Walter Bullock gem from the movie Sing Baby Sing.\u00a0 Both albums came out in 1963 and are part of an extraordinary output of 37 original albums total in her 20 years with the label.<\/p>\n

After countless television guest appearances, NBC gave Nancy her own network series, The Nancy Wilson Show, for which she won an Emmy\u00ae Award for the 1967-68 season.\u00a0 She also performed on shows like The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Flip Wilson Show, and, over the years, either as herself or in the occasional acting role, on TV series like I Spy, Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Cosby Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover and, lately, Moesha and The Parkers.<\/p>\n

After years with Capitol, during many of which she was second in sales only to the Beatles, surpassing even Sinatra, Peggy Lee, the Beach Boys and early idol Nat King Cole, the business had changed and Nancy felt a new label might bring about a fresh start.\u00a0 So she moved to Columbia, where, despite her usual high aesthetic standards, she found it impossible to compete, sales-wise, with increasingly teen-oriented acts.<\/p>\n

One of the more interesting albums from her later period came about in 1991, when singer Barry Manilow was given a sheath full of lyrics written by the late Johnny Mercer which the great songwriter had never put to music.\u00a0 Manilow added melodies and chose Nancy to sing the resultant songs.<\/p>\n

In 1995, when National Public Radio (NPR) was looking for an articulate voice with both name value and jazz credibility to host their “Jazz Profiles” series, Nancy was the obvious choice.\u00a0 Not only did she know the music, but she knew the artists personally. Her first profile for this program was the 75th birthday tribute to Charlie Parker.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, Nancy teamed up with MCG Jazz, a non-profit, independent, specialty record label, to record her only Christmas album, A Nancy Wilson Christmas, released for the 2001 holiday season.<\/p>\n

Nancy gave the world of music anther gift on August 25, 2004, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal). Her second MCG Jazz release features compositions never before recorded in her 50 plus years in the music business and special guests ranging from R&B star Kenny Lattimore to jazz legends George Shearing, Toots Thielemans and Phil Woods.\u00a0 R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) won the 2004 GRAMMY\u00ae Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. That was followed by one last recording, Turned To Blue, that won yet another Grammy for 2006.<\/p>\n

In 2004, Nancy began to talk about giving up the road and retiring to spend more time with her family and her grandchildren. She cut back on the number of performances per year, and in recent years performed predominantly in concert halls. Now she appears only on rare occasion, and while her fans will miss her, after 690 years of touring and 67+ albums’ worth of material, we have plenty of listening and plenty of memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Nancy Wilson arrived in New York City in 1959, she knew what she wanted: to launch a national singing career with John Levy as her manager and Capitol as her record label. She got what she wanted and the rest, as they say, is history. To this day, John Levy remains her manager, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":62,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-86","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86\/revisions\/426"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lushlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}