Duke University

“Fancy Miss Nancy:”

An ethnographic study of Nancy Wilson’s music and cultural impact

Dawei Gao

AAAS140 Intro to Jazz

Professor Waggoner

December 13, 2021

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PREFACE

I still vividly remember the very first time I played jazz in front of an audience: early in

the fall of 7th grade, I joined our school’s jazz club and began practicing for our first concert,

where we would play the Bossa Nova staple The Girl From Ipanema. After many weeks of

rehearsing the syncopated barrage of eighth notes in our song, coordinating with our percussion,

and improvisation practice, we were finally ready to play. As the players who had made an all-

state band the previous year, I and the alto sax were given time to improvise in the middle of our

song. When the time came for my solo, I was nervous. We had always practiced in the band

room, and the stress of playing in front of the crowd of parents was beginning to seep into my

playing. I took a deep breath, reciting my solo one last time—and blanked. I couldn’t bring

myself to play a single note, and that half-minute period, punctuated by the beat of the bass and

our maracas player, was the longest thirty seconds of my middle-school life.

In spite of the jazz fiasco, I began to practice harder than before and eventually ended

middle school as a competent jazz player. Throughout my high school and early college years, I

sadly eased out of band, but continued to expand my listening habits by exploring genres such as

jazz. As I began to interest myself in music production, one of my favorite hobbies was

dissecting rap songs by looking at the cultural influences of modern rappers such as A$AP

Rocky, The Notorious B.I.G., and Kendrick Lamar. One of the more interesting influences which

I stumbled upon during these forays was the late jazz singer Nancy Wilson, the multi-talented

“music stylist” who remained an icon in jazz for over a half-century. After initially hearing her

music and story, I became interested in Mrs. Wilson as a groundbreaking R&B singer, as R&B

was and is one of my favorite genres to listen to. I chose Nancy Wilson as the subject of this

ethnography due to her unique perspectives as a female black artist who performed during
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multiple eras of the Jazz renaissance in America. Through her music and the cult of personality

which surrounded her every action and appearance, Nancy Wilson was able to establish herself

as a technically gifted singer, engaging storyteller, and cultural icon. In this paper I will cover the

life of Mrs. Wilson, focusing on the indelible cultural effect of her music and how it affected jazz

performers, modern rap artists, and the everyday music enjoyer.

BACKGROUND

Nancy Sue Wilson was born in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1937 to Olden Wilson, an iron

foundry worker, and Lillian Ryan, a maid (Gardner 1964). Through her early childhood, Nancy’s

father would buy her records to listen to at home, and from an early age she was able to listen to

big band icons such as Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Jimmy Scott, and the Lionel Hampton Big

Band. As Mrs. Wilson explains in her interview with NPR, “the juke joint down on the block had

a great jukebox and there I heard Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, LaVerne Baker, Little

Esther.” Inspired by these influences as well as her parents’ motivation, Nancy Wilson began to

sing at age 4. From this early age, it was already clear that she had a talent for music; Wilson

spent her childhood perfecting her craft and at the age of 15 won a prize for a talent contest to

appear twice a week on her first show, Skyline Melodies. In her early twenties, she got her first

big break in meeting Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, who suggested she move to New York City

for career opportunities. Initially, her music was not well-received, and Adderly had to

“practically beg and drag” his manager at Capitol Records to listen to Wilson’s performances at

the nightclub which she represented (Gardner 1964). However, hard work paid off, and Wilson

eventually released her debut solo Guess Who I Saw Today in 1960. Public reaction to the song

was immediate and overwhelmingly positive, so positive, in fact, that Capitol Records was
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obliged to release five more Nancy Wilson albums between April 1960 and July 1962

(Downbeat 2018). During this period, Wilson saw the writing on the wall for pop jazz music, and

focused on the genre which we call Rhythm and Blues today.

Under the direction of Capitol Records, Wilson was able to shift to R&B albums like her

first release Like in Love, as well as dabble in singing Christmas music tracks which lifted her to

the top of the Billboard charts. Throughout the 1960s and early 70s, Nancy Wilson enjoyed

immense success, being labeled by TIME as the “consummate singer and actress” (All About

Jazz 2014). Although Wilson enjoyed the most success in Jazz singing, she was also a prolific

actress who appeared on multiple shows, and eventually hosted The Nancy Wilson Show for

which she won an Emmy. The multi-talented Wilson was also a dedicated civil rights activist

who participated in the Selma march in 1965 and was fervently active in political activism for

the Civil Rights movement, receiving a NAACP Image Award in 1998 for her effort (Downbeat

2018). Towards the end of her career, Wilson stayed in the public spotlight as a generational icon

and hosted the NPR show Jazz Profiles, in which she recounted her experiences working for

nearly a half-century in the Jazz world.

NANCY WILSON: THE PERSON

What made Mrs. Wilson so universally loved? For some, it was her image: Nancy Wilson

was self-made, rising from her humble background to create hit record after hit record. She was

attractive, charming, and charismatic, constantly engaging with her fans and the media and

showing her stage appeal by performing in multiple shows throughout her career. Through her

public career, she was a regular fixture on programs such as The Tonight Show and The Ed

Sullivan Show. Her image and appeal brought together generations of listeners who lauded her
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with praises of the “Fancy Miss Nancy.” (NPR Archives 2007). Through her career, Wilson

became known for her carefully styled outfits, perfect smiles, and impeccable social graces. A

former manager of Mrs. Wilson described her appeal “as possessing a distinctive sense of

personal style that I admired. The way she presented herself. Nothing ever looked “trendy” on

her. I’ve collected classic cars throughout my adult life and vividly remember the white Rolls

Royce she bought from Queen Elizabeth being featured in Jet magazine.” (Zimmerman 2019).

Time after time, critics praised her loving, warm personality and labeled her as a class act in

Jazz. Through her personal charm and charisma, Nancy Wilson was able to productively engage

with the media and public audiences to promote her popular albums.

For others, it was her healthy relationship with music. Unlike many of her

contemporaries, Nancy Wilson did not smoke, use drugs, or play into the stereotype of the

“tortured artist” which many creatives believed was the only path to artistic virtuosity. While

Mrs. Wilson had every reason to scorn her humble beginnings, she rejected these stereotypes,

choosing to focus instead on the positives of her climb to success. Recounting this decision years

later, Wilson explained, “well, nobody really did that much for me ... I mean what could they do?

They said nice things and introduced me when I came into the club or something, but actually,

nobody took me seriously. They thought I was just kidding about being a singer, and by the time

they began to believe, I was on my way.” (Gardner 1964) Because of her focused mentality,

Nancy Wilson was able to productively engage with record labels and mass media to a much

greater extent than many of her contemporaries, who struggled with the focus of the public

spotlight and often turned to drug use to cope with the demands of performing day in and day

out. For agents and recording studios, Nancy Wilson was the rare type of artist who created

without an ego and reacted positively to the pressure of right touring schedules common to
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musicians of her time. As explained by another former manager, “she was friendly rather than

withdrawn, co-operative rather than temperamental, poised but not blasé, confident but not

arrogant. In short, she was an agent’s dream, and for too long this type of singer could be found

only in dreams.” (Zimmerman 2019). Due to her near-universal charm to the media and her

listeners, as well as her active rejection of the trope of the tortured creative, Nancy Wilson was

able to produce music at an extremely consistent pace and outlast almost all of her

contemporaries through the changing eras of Jazz.

NANCY WILSON: THE MUSICIAN

Through her many albums over the decades, Nancy Wilson was revered as both an

elegant musician and profound storyteller. As TIME said, “She is, all at once, both cool and

sweet, both singer and storyteller.” (All About Jazz 2014). Growing up, she modeled her singing

after Jazz icons Jimmy Scott and Dinah Washington. Nancy Wilson quickly realized that she had

a natural gift for singing, and received no formal training over the course of her lifetime. As she

sang for such a sustained period, it would be hard to fit Mrs. Wilson into a single label; rather,

she drew from many influences, of which swing, pop jazz, bebop, hard bop, and latin jazz

featured heavily. The same fluidity of artistic pursuits which made her an enduring artist also

attracted criticism from those in the jazz community who believed she was switching from one

popular trend to the next. In response to these accusations, Nancy Wilson remained unfazed,

saying that “she “couldn’t care less” about reviewers who felt that she had strayed too far from

her jazz roots or those who tried to narrow her musical boundaries” (Bernstein 2018). Ms.

Wilson resisted the label of “jazz singer” for much of her career, although jazz was the form to

which she returned time and again and in which she had her greatest critical and popular success.
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She considered herself above all “a song stylist,” she once told The Washington Post. “That’s my

essence,” she said, “to weave words, to be dramatic.”

One constant throughout this time period was her ability to craft vocal masterpieces

which spoke heavily to the human experience. Despite common perceptions of Nancy Wilson as

a happy, cheerful singer, she was just as able to appeal to the negative emotions of sadness,

lovebreak, and melancholy in her work. Even sad tracks were sung beautifully, however; a

former producer of Mrs. Wilson’s work spoke of how “sophistication and hauteur still are

noticeable Wilson approaches to certain lyrics, but perhaps what those critics and listeners are

implying is that there is not bitterness in her approach” (Bernstein 2018). As her career

progressed into the 70s and 80s, however, Mrs. Wilson’s storytelling aged beautifully and began

to include songs describing a wider range of emotions than her earlier years in the pop jazz

industry. A storyteller to the extreme, Nancy Wilson was able to shake all critics of her style by

the end of her career, and she was universally loved for her “singing which rings of life in all its

various manifestations. She can now deliver a compassionate lyric, and unhappiness is no longer

a foreign mood. She is witty, philosophical, defiant, appealing, tender, occasionally sad, but

never bitter” (Bernstein 2018).

In order to better understand her specific style, I listened through the album which started

it all, Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly. The hard-bop-esque, vocal-jazz album comprises

twelve tracks which are adaptations of popular jazz standards of the time. Considered essential

listening for jazz enthusiasts, the album features Nancy Wilson as the vocalist, Cannonball

Adderly on the alto saxophone, Nat Adderly on the cornet, accompanied by Joe Zawinul on the

piano, Sam Jones on the bass, and Louis Hayes on the drums. Of the twelve tracks on the album,

five of these tracks were instrumentals. This was intentionally done, as Nancy Wilson’s role as
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the “vocal stylist” was to capture the tonality of a third leading instrument in her appearances.

Through the first seven songs, I was struck by Mrs. Wilson’s elegant phrasing, which

emphasized certain words to great effect. This effect was demonstrated most masterfully in The

Masquerade is Over, in which Mrs. Wilson fully exercises her creative license and astounding

range to build a story about the obligations of love, which ends in a soul-rending crescendo.

Another astounding aspect of her singing is that she never once strains to hit high notes; all the

praise for her naturally gifted voice was self-evident throughout her tracks. Her voice captured a

genuine emotion hard to find among singers of her age or today, and contained clear enunciation,

phrasing, and diction throughout the album. Nancy Wilson’s voice fit beautifully with the

playing of Nat and Cannonball Adderly, whose trumpet and sax playing was most masterfully

demonstrated in Save Your Love For Me. Throughout this song, her voice forms a call-and-

response with the saxophone and trumpet, linking elegantly while being supported with the deep

vibrational rhythms of the bass and piano. All of these effects add up to tell a cohesive “story;”

Mrs. Wilson matches the tone, volume, and support of her voice in such a way so that her words

match the meanings of her words in a way few artists can do. After listening to this jazz classic,

it comes as no surprise that many collectors consider Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly to

be an essential listening track.

One interesting aspect of Nancy Wilson’s talent for singing was her previously-

mentioned lack of any sense of formal training. A visitor to her creative studios was astounded at

how “her ability to sing is a natural gift. At no point in her life has she either doubted that ability

or sought to improve upon its quality by formal study or training. She does not read or play

music and relies primarily on a keen sense of hearing and her memory in learning and perfecting

a new tune” (Gardner 1964). Ever the entertainer, she would often impress her fans with her
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speed in memorizing newly-heard jazz songs. She could copy the style of any musical artist she

chose at ease, and it was with this energy that Nancy Wilson could “sell herself and her song on

a very high level. Naturally, coming from her background—the Dinah Washington era and

Jimmy Scott—it's soul, but very modern. Very high level, modern sound” (Bernstein 2018). As

she began to gain fame, she remained dedicated to her fans, and sought to please her audience at

all costs. What was a talent for her eventually led to early fatigue, however: “she was singing

every night for hours. She plunged into her performances with abandon and drive, responding

eagerly to audience reaction and enthusiasm. She pushed her vocal equipment to the limit.” Her

hard work paid off however; due to her intense dedication to the satisfaction of her fans, “Fancy

Miss Nancy” drew in fans from all backgrounds who continued to follow her through all stages

of her career.

Just as Nancy Wilson loved her fans, so too was she universally loved by her audience,

who appeared en masse to support her performances. During her initial years at Capitol Records,

Mrs. Wilson gained a large following through radio, the medium through which many of her

songs were played. As the demand for “pop jazz” waned under the rise of Rock n’ Roll in the

1950s, Nancy Wilson began to appear in greater frequency at Jazz festivals around the country.

During these performances, listeners of Nancy Wilson were impressed by her consistent and

unfaltering effort to engage with the audiences of her performances. She would listen in to

concertgoers, addressing them with the same poise and grace which she carried in her songs.

Through the listening experience, Nancy Wilson served as the storyteller to an actively engaged

audience. For many listeners, the best way to appreciate her style of jazz was to take in both the

music technique of her song and listen to the music as a cohesive story. Although she never

gained the level of recognition enjoyed by jazz singers such as Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald,
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Nancy Wilson was able to dramatically influence the jazz and R&B landscape over a longer

period of time. Through her performances, she gained widespread attention, becoming a

household name in America and having drinks such as the “Nancy cocktail” (honey mixed with

vodka) named after her (Crystal Mixer 2020).

NANCY WILON: THE CULTURAL ICON

Nancy Wilson’s music had a powerful effect on her fans, and when she passed away in

2018, there was a large outpouring of support for her music by the people who had listened to

her albums. Fans mentioned multiple qualities, such as her expressive storytelling in songs and

her picture-perfect personality. For example, one listener of her music wrote of how “Me and my

Air Force buddies would listen to her into the wee, small hours as we consumed considerable

amounts of Akadama wine. We all had a crush on her, having been blown away, not by just her

voice but also by her exquisite beauty. There was one LP that was a favorite, "The Sound of

Nancy Wilson" and if any of my buddies are still on the planet, I know what they're listening to

and shedding a tear. I shall miss the "Beautiful Lady". Her impeccable phrasing and dramatic

interpretation of a song was/is the best” (Bernstein 2018). Listeners connected with her music

through the stories and common experiences which they told, helped along by her “classy and

exquisite” penchant for singing. She was sophisticated, and the audiences at her performances

eagerly listened to her words of knowledge and respected the storytelling side of Mrs. Wilson.

Perhaps the most interesting cultural effect of Nancy Wilson’s music was its impact on a

completely different genre: modern rap. These two types of music were night and day; Wilson, a

straight-shooting performer, routinely criticized rap culture “for denigrating women and

romanticizing violence through their music.” As much as she criticized the genre, however, her
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widespread influence, especially among black communities in the 1970s and 80s, led to her

serving as an artistic influence for many of the popular rappers today. This trend was not unique

to her alone; similar singers such as Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nina Simone were

similarly-appreciated as the female black innovators of America’s artistic culture. One of the

greatest ways in which she influenced great rappers of today was in her storytelling style: in

particular, her descriptions of everyday, middle class American life. In a generation in which so

many singers chose to write music concerning glitz, glamour, and hollywood-like excess, Nancy

Wilson stayed true to her beginnings and performed music from her corner of life. While many

rap performers which followed her continued to talk about the glitz and glamour of rapping, a

new segment of artists, beginning with Kanye West, Mac Miller, and Kendrick Lamar, began to

advocate for accessibility in the rap industry (Drake 2020). Instead of following in the footsteps

of their forefathers, these artists emphasized relatability through storytelling in the same ways

which Mrs. Wilson performed. While older rappers often chased excessive lifestyles and idolized

money in their music, modern rappers (those who began to produce in the 1990s and later) began

to shift focus to a variety of topics which connected with the everyday man. To dedicate their

songs to the jazz musicians which inspired their brand of storytelling, rappers began to

incorporate samples of older songs to pay homage to their predecessors and connect

communities across time. Nancy Wilson was no stranger to this trend: the orchestral swell in her

R&B track Loving You is sampled as the background riff in Kendrick Lamar’s Ignorance and

Bliss, and she is similarly sampled by A$AP Rocky and Playboi Carti in Frat Rules

(Whosampled 2021). Perhaps the more interesting result of this cultural flow between early R&B

singers and modern rappers is the inclusion of older elements in today’s rap tracks: for example,

Kendrick Lamar emphasizes a strong backbeat, repetition of verses and notes, and a blending of
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instruments through unique flows and usage of a “call-and-response” pattern. Although Mrs.

Wilson had a clear disdain for rappers of her time, rapping as a genre has surprisingly evolved to

include many of the elements of her style of music, as demonstrated through her cultural impact

in the form of her sampled tracks.

CONCLUSION

Nancy Wilson was a cultural icon who became famous for her inclusion of storytelling

into the music which she wrote. Through the stories which she has told, she united people from

diverse segments of life- in particular, those who follow opposite genres of music, such as jazz

enthusiasts and rap enthusiasts. It speaks to her powerful persona that she was able to unite such

different groups of people. Through the half-century which she spent in the music industry, she

was able to produce music at a high level for decades and build a dedicated following of

individuals which frequented her performances at jazz festivals. Her impact on the development

of R&B and soul cannot be understated, as her classy and proper personality helped the genre

expand into one of the most-listened genres of today. In terms of her personal effect on me,

Nancy Wilson has opened my eyes to the earlier tracks of R&B history, as she is one of the

artists which I frequently listen to currently. Her natural talent as a singer has inspired me to

explore similar artists such as Nina Simone and Dinah Washington, as well as dig deeper into the

jazz world to find similarly-talented artists. Nancy Wilson’s strong talents as a singer and

charismatic storyteller has made her music withstand the test of time, standing as a constant in

the ever-changing sea of music tradition.

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Works Cited

Bernstein, Adam. “Nancy Wilson, Acclaimed 'Song Stylist' Who Defied Musical

Boundaries, Dies at 81.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Dec. 2018,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/nancy-wilson-acclaimed-song-

stylist-who-defied-musical-boundaries-dies-at-81/2018/12/14/5d27ce38-ff5d-11e8-

862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html.

CrystalMixer.com. “Fancy Nancy Recipe.” Crystal Mixer, 10 Jan. 2020,

https://www.crystalmixer.com/fancy-nancy-recipe/.

Downbeat. “In Memoriam: Jazz Singer Nancy Wilson.” Downbeat, 14 Dec. 2018,

https://downbeat.com/?%2Fnews%2Fdetail%2Fjazz-vocalist-nancy-wilson-dies-at-

81.

Drake, David. “The 10 Major Influences on Today's Rap Sound.” Complex, Complex, 17

Apr. 2020, https://www.complex.com/music/2013/11/major-influences-todays-rap-

sound/gucci-mane.

Gardner, Barbara. “Nancy Wilson: The Baby Grows Up.” DownBeat Archives, 1964,

https://downbeat.com/archives/detail/the-baby-grows-up.

Jazz, All About. “Nancy Wilson Music @ All about Jazz.” All About Jazz Musicians,

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/nancy-wilson.

“Nancy Wilson - Samples, Covers and Remixes.” WhoSampled,

https://www.whosampled.com/Nancy-Wilson/.
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NPR Archives. “Nancy Wilson.” NPR.org, 19 June 2007,

https://web.archive.org/web/20140120125235/http://www.npr.org/people/2101390/

nancy-wilson.

Zimmerman, Brian. “Nancy Wilson - ‘This Girl Is a Woman Now.’” JAZZIZ Magazine, 20

Feb. 2019, https://www.jazziz.com/nancy-wilson-this-girl-is-a-woman-now/.