Jul 22, 2026 12:37 PM
In Memoriam: Rodney Holmes, 1966–2026
Drummer Rodney Holmes, a powerful presence behind the kit who emerged as an in-demand player on the New York scene…
Wilson’s ability to connect to audiences helped her to win two Grammy awards and multiple other accolades. She was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2022.
(Photo: Mark Sheldon)Cassandra Wilson, a singer, songwriter and producer who was one of the most acclaimed and successful jazz vocalists of her generation, died Sept. 2 at her home in Jackson, Mississippi. She was 70. Her death was announced by her longtime manager, Robert Torre, in a statement to the media. Torre did not specify a cause of death but said that she passed “peacefully at home, surrounded by family, close friends and her manager.”
A native of Jackson, Wilson wove both contemporary pop music and strands of the musical traditions associated with her home state — country, blues, folk and gospel —into jazz. Combined with her instantly distinctive voice, a low, dark and smoky contralto, it made for a unique and idiosyncratic brand of music that was completely her own.
Recording 19 albums over 30 years, she gained a reputation particularly for unusual choices of covers in this hybrid idiom. She sang songs from a wide range of sources, from Bob Dylan and U2 to Glen Campbell and Mississippi Fred McDowell, as well as the jazz standard repertoire. Her 1995 recording of Son House’s “Death Letter” became a calling card of sorts, a staple of her live set and the theme to the third season of the HBO series True Detective.
Wilson regarded this openness to all sonic avenues as a virtue. “The muse comes to you through pianos, guitars, drums, sticks, stones, trees,” she told the National Endowment of the Arts. “Trusting my intuition enough, and trusting my ears enough, to know, ‘OK, this is good. I like it. It feels good. It makes me feel good.’ So I know that when I sing it, it’s going to make other people feel good as well.”
That ability to connect to audiences helped Wilson to win two Grammy awards and multiple other accolades, including honorary doctorates from Jackson’s Millsaps College (her alma mater) and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Time magazine in 2001 proclaimed her “America’s Best Singer”; she was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2022.
Among the many tributes issued upon her passing was one from Jackson’s mayor, John Hornh, who said that the city “has lost an extraordinary native daughter, and the world has lost a singular musical voice. Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her wherever her music reached. … Her work had rare depth of character and a profound understanding of how music moves people, tells stories and connects generations.”
Cassandra Marie Fowlkes was born Dec. 4, 1955, in Jackson, the third and youngest child of Herman Fowlkes, a jazz and blues guitarist and a high school music teacher, and Mary McDaniel, an elementary school teacher. Her mother loved Motown, which along with her father’s jazz records became the soundtrack to young Cassandra’s life.
She studied classical piano, learned some rudimentary guitar from her father, and took up the clarinet in the Murrah High School marching band. She also found herself drawn to the folk and folk-rock singer-songwriters of the period, especially Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and performed as part of a high-school folk trio. She matriculated at Millsaps College, transferred to Jackson State University and graduated in 1980 with a degree in mass communication.
The following year, she married radio personality Anthony Wilson, moved to New Orleans and took a job at a television station. A year after that, the couple moved again, to New Jersey, where Cassandra decided to try her luck on the New York jazz scene. She met alto saxophonist Steve Coleman at a jam session and soon became a founding member of the experimental M-BASE collective. She also started working with Vernon Reid’s Black Rock Collective, the influence of both collectives filtering into her first two albums, 1985’s Point Of View and 1987’s Days Aweigh.
However, it was with Wilson’s third album, the 1988 standards date Blue Skies, that she broke through, reaching number two on the Billboard jazz albums chart and garnering critical acclaim. She continued to straddle both lanes of the music. However, a turning point came with her signing to Blue Note Records in 1993. Her debut that year for the label, Blue Light ‘Til Dawn, was the first on which she explored blues, folk and rock repertoire and was both a critical and commercial success. She compounded those successes with her 1995 follow-up, New Moon Daughter, which won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance and is now considered a classic.
Now a major star in the jazz world, Wilson continued moving freely between traditional jazz and more cutting-edge experiments, with the combination coming to define her sound. Her albums and live performances were consistently lucrative commercially and critically. (Another standards collection, 2008’s Loverly, won her a second Grammy.) After her 2010 jazz and blues album Silver Pony, she left Blue Note; two subsequent recordings (2012’s Another Country, for eOne Records, and 2015’s Coming Forth By Day, for Legacy) proved to be her last.
Wilson moved in 2015 back to Jackson, Mississippi, where she and a longtime friend, singer Rhonda Richmond, cofounded a jazz club, The Yellow Scarf, and a label, Ojah Records, working together to promote and support arts and culture in Mississippi. These and other considerations kept Wilson largely off the road and out of the larger jazz world’s limelight, even as she won the NEA Jazz Masters fellowship in 2022. However, her appearance at 2025’s Saratoga and Exit Zero Cape May Jazz Festivals, celebrating 30 years of New Moon Daughter, were widely seen as a triumphant comeback.
Wilson’s marriage to Anthony Wilson, and a second to actor Isaach de Bankole, both ended in divorce. She is survived by her son (by Wilson), Jeris Wilson. DB
A drummer’s drummer, Rodney Holmes gigged with everyone from Joe Zawinul and Carlos Santana to Steve Kimock and the Brecker Brothers.
Jul 22, 2026 12:37 PM
Drummer Rodney Holmes, a powerful presence behind the kit who emerged as an in-demand player on the New York scene…
Clockwise from top left, Mary Halvorson, Patricia Brennan, Adam O’Farrill, Keith Jarrett’s At the Deer Head Inn: The Complete Recordings, Sheila Jordan and Jaki Byard.
Jul 16, 2026 1:34 PM
The DownBeat Critics Poll never ceases to amaze! And the 74th Edition offered plenty of accolades for poll veterans and…
“The love from the jazz and music community restored my faith in humanity,” Walia wrote in an online post upon his release from detention at an ICE facility.
Aug 18, 2026 2:15 PM
Indian jazz guitarist and composer Pritesh Walia has been released after being unexpectedly detained by ICE and taken…
Percussionist Poncho Sanchez was among the artists scheduled to perform at the now-canceled inaugural LA Jazz Festival.
Aug 11, 2026 12:53 PM
The inaugural LA Jazz Festival, originally scheduled to run Aug. 7–23 with dozens of events across Los Angeles’…
Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet will record live at New York’s Village Vanguard for ECM records on Aug. 26–27.
Jul 22, 2026 12:46 PM
One of Joe Lovano’s buzz terms is “the moment of now” and with seemingly infinite patience — despite a schedule…
