LOS ANGELES — Nancy Wilson, the Ohio-born Grammy-winning “song stylist” and torch singer whose polished pop-jazz vocals made her a platinum artist and top concert performer, has died.
Wilson, who retired from touring in 2011, died after a long illness at her home in Pioneertown, a California desert community near Joshua Tree National Park, her manager and publicist Devra Hall Levy told The Associated Press late Thursday night. She was 81.
Born in Chillicothe, the eldest of six children of an iron foundry worker and a maid, Wilson sang in church as a girl and by age 4 had decided on her profession.
She was attending West High School in Columbus high school when she won a talent contest sponsored by WTVN-TV and was given her own program.
After briefly attending Central State College, now Central State University, she toured Ohio with the Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Big Band and met such jazz artists as saxophonist “Cannonball”Adderley, who encouraged her to move to New York.
Influenced by Dinah Washington, Nat “King” Cole and other stars, Wilson covered everything from jazz standards to “Little Green Apples” and in the 1960s alone released eight albums that reached the top 20 on Billboard’s pop charts.
Sometimes elegant and understated, or quick and conversational and a little naughty, she was best known for such songs as her breakthrough “Guess Who I Saw Today” and the 1964 hit “(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am,” which drew upon Broadway, pop and jazz.