Career
When Wilson met Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, he suggested she move to New York City for career opportunities. In 1959 she moved to New York to try to hire Adderley's manager and get a contract with Capitol Records. Within four weeks of her arrival she got her first big break, a call to fill in for Irene Reid at The Blue Morocco. The club booked Wilson on a permanent basis; she was singing four nights a week and working as a secretary for the New York Institute of Technology during the day. John Levy sent demos of "Guess Who I Saw Today", "Sometimes I'm Happy", and two other songs to Capitol Records. The label signed her in 1960.
Wilson's debut single, "Guess Who I Saw Today", was so successful that between April 1960 and July 1962 Capitol Records released five Nancy Wilson albums. Her first album, Like in Love, displayed her talent in rhythm and blues. Adderley suggested that she should steer away from her original pop style and gear her music toward jazz and ballads. In 1962 their collaboration produced the album Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley, which propelled her to national prominence with the hit R&B song, "Save Your Love For Me"; Wilson would later appear on Adderley's live album In Person (1968). Between March 1964 and June 1965, four of Wilson's albums hit the Top 10 on Billboard's Top LPs chart. In 1963 "Tell Me The Truth" became her first truly major hit, leading up to her performance at the Coconut Grove in 1964 – the turning point of her career, garnering critical acclaim from coast to coast. TIME said of her, "She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller." In 1964 Wilson released what became her most successful hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am", which peaked at No. 11. From 1963 to 1971 Wilson logged 11 songs on the Hot 100, including two Christmas singles. However, "Face It Girl, It's Over" was the only remaining non-Christmas song to crack the Top 40 for Wilson (No. 29 in 1968).
After making numerous television guest appearances, Wilson eventually got her own series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968), which won an Emmy. Over the years she appeared on many popular television shows such as I Spy (more or less playing herself as a Las Vegas singer in the 1966 episode "Lori" and as a similar character in the 1973 episode "The Confession" of The F.B.I.), Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Jack Paar Program, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show (1966), The Danny Kaye Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Kraft Music Hall, The Sinbad Show, The Cosby Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover, Moesha, and The Parkers. She was a guest on numerous popular variety and talk shows including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show, The Arsenio Hall Show, and The Flip Wilson Show. She was featured in Robert Townsend's 1993 film The Meteor Man and in The Big Score. She also appeared on The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dimes Telethon.
She was signed by Capitol Records in the late 1970s, and in an attempt to broaden her appeal, she released Life, Love and Harmony, an album of soulful, funky dance cuts that included the track "Sunshine", which was to become one of her most sought-after recordings (albeit among supporters of the rare soul scene with whom she would not usually register). In 1977 she recorded the theme song for The Last Dinosaur, a made-for-TV movie which opened in theaters in Japan.
In the 1980s she recorded five albums for Japanese labels because she preferred recording live, and American labels frequently did not give her that option. She gained such wide popularity that she was selected as the winner of the annual Tokyo Song Festivals.
In 1982 Wilson recorded with Hank Jones and the Great Jazz Trio. In that same year she recorded with the Griffith Park Band, with members Chick Corea and Joe Henderson, and she signed with CBS Records. Her album releases included The Two of Us (1984), duets with Ramsey Lewis produced by Stanley Clarke; Forbidden Lover (1987), including the title-track duet with Carl Anderson; and A Lady with a Song, which became her 52nd album release in 1989. She participated in the PBS show Newport Jazz '87 as the singer of a jazz trio with John Williams and Roy McCurdy. In 1989 Nancy Wilson in Concert played as a television special.
In the early 1990s Wilson recorded an album paying tribute to Johnny Mercer with co-producer Barry Manilow entitled With My Lover Beside Me. During this decade she also recorded two other albums, Love, Nancy and her sixtieth album If I Had My Way. In the late 1990s she teamed up with MCG Jazz, a youth-education program of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, a non-profit, minority-directed arts and learning organization located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Wilson performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 1995 and at the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1997. In 1999 she hosted a show in honor of Ella Fitzgerald entitled Forever Ella on the A&E Network. All the proceeds from 2001's A Nancy Wilson Christmas went to support the work of MCG Jazz. Wilson was the host for NPR's Jazz Profiles from 1996 to 2005. This series spotlighted the legends and legacy of jazz through music, interviews, and commentary. Wilson and the program were the recipients of the George Foster Peabody Award in 2001. Wilson's second and third albums with MCG Jazz, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) (2005) and Turned to Blue (2007), both won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album. On September 10, 2011, she performed on a public stage for the last time at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. According to Wilson, "I'm not going to be doing it anymore, and what better place to end it than where I started – in Ohio."
