Wilson, Edith (1896–1981)

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Wilson, Edith (1896–1981)

African-American blues singer and vaudeville performer . Born Edith Goodall on September 6, 1896, in Louisville, Kentucky; died of a brain tumor on March 30, 1981, in Chicago, Illinois; daughter of Susan (Jones) Goodall (a housekeeper) and Hundley Goodall (a teacher); educated in public schools in Louisville until about age 14, and received private tutoring in music beginning at age 13; married Danny Wilson (a pianist), in 1910s (died 1928); married Millard Wilson, in 1947.

Principal recordings include:

"Nervous Blues" (1921); "Vampin' Liza Jane" (1921); "Frankie" (1921); "Old Time Blues" (1921); "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue" (c. 1928); "My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More" (c. 1929); "I'll Get Even With You" (c. 1929).

Edith Wilson was born on September 6, 1896, the third child of Susan Jones Goodall , a housekeeper, and Hundley Goodall, a schoolteacher. The family lived in a tidy, quiet neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, and social life centered around the church. It was at church that Wilson first sang and performed, as did her siblings. Louisville itself was also an early influence, with a lively music scene that over the years was home to numerous entertainers, including blues singers Edmonia Henderson, Sara Martin , and Helen Humes , tap dancers and comedians Buck and Bubbles, and musicians Dickie Wells, John Wickley, Elmo Dunn, and Jonah Jones. A show producer named Joe Clark spotted Wilson and put her onstage in "a little show down at White City Park," without her parents' knowledge, when she was only 13. Discovering her daughter's secret, Susan Goodall went to see the show for herself, and along with the rest of the audience was bowled over by Wilson's talent. The Goodalls hired a music tutor for their daughter, but made her promise to stay in school. Wilson kept the promise—briefly. Singers were being paid $35 a week, and this amount of money was more than Wilson and her parents could resist. By 14, she was concentrating on her work as a singer and performer.

Shortly after her career began, she met pianist Danny Wilson, who expanded her repertoire of songs and began managing her career by booking her into shows in Chicago and Milwaukee. His professional interest expanded to include the personal, and the two married. Thanks to her husband's management, Wilson and his sister Lena Wilson , with Danny at the piano, sang in all the clubs in Chicago. Later, they traveled to Washington, D.C., Atlantic City, and New York. In New York City, record executive and composer Perry Bradford heard Wilson sing and negotiated a deal for her with Columbia Records. "Nervous Blues," which Bradford had written, was recorded on September 12, 1921, a version that was rejected by Columbia. On September 15, she rerecorded "Nervous Blues" and "Vampin' Liza Jane" in takes that pleased the record company. Several more unsuccessful recording sessions followed before October 6, when Wilson, backed by her husband on piano and her band Johnny Dunn's Original Jazz Hounds, recorded "Frankie" and "Old Time Blues." The songs were cheerful and danceable and began to sell well. As proof, she was signed to tour by the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the largest circuit for black entertainers.

Wilson's youth of church going and suburban gentility was never forgotten, and although blues singing of the day was frequently rough and graphically explicit, she refused to perform in raunchy skits or to sing songs with questionable lyrics. Instead, she chose sweeter songs with less suggestive lyrics (although some that she sang have double meanings), and songs that appealed to white audiences as well as black, leading her to become a crossover artist to the white market. Later, her repertoire grew to include show tunes, songs sung in foreign languages, and other material that classified her as more of a cabaret-style singer with some sophistication than a belter of "gutbucket" blues. (These qualities also have led some modern-day blues purists to question her authenticity.) At some of her club dates, Wilson sang doubleentendre pieces like "He May Be Your Man (But He Comes to See Me Sometimes)" and "My Handy Man" as well as doing adult comedy skits and songs, but she was careful to remain within her own boundaries of propriety and good taste.

Vaudeville still demanded "plantation stereotypes" of African-American performers, and Wilson performed in many blackface numbers. She continued to develop her skills in acting and comedy and was acclaimed for her performances in a revue in the Dixieland Plantation Room of the Winter Garden in New York. Revamped as a musical comedy called Dover Street to Dixie, the show toured Europe starring Florence Mills and featuring Wilson in a number of set pieces. She returned to the United States in 1924 and played the Cotton Club and some other "name" theaters with the comic Doc Straine. She also continued to record with Columbia, which issued 26 out of the 32 single-record sides she made with them. As Wilson became known as the "Queen of the Blues," she also developed a reputation for tough-mindedness. She refused to be contracted to anyone and negotiated her own talent and terms; when committed to a project, she would not haggle over royalties and signed, particularly with Columbia, for recording deals with fixed and modest prices of as little as $125. She also made her own deals to sing as a solo act on the vaudeville circuit. In 1926, Wilson sang in Lew Leslie's Blackbirds and received her best reviews to date and the biggest boost to her career. This musical revue also toured Europe where she was hailed (particularly in Paris) as the "colored chanteuse with her naughty lyrics and impertinent humor."

Throughout the remainder of the 1920s, Wilson was a prominent performer in musical revues and vaudeville. She returned from Europe to work at the Cotton Club again and to sing on the Cotton Club's weekly radio programs broadcast by CBS (the club's house band was then led by Duke Ellington). Wilson's music appealed to white audiences, but blacks and whites did not perform together except for charity. Along with entertainers including Eddie Cantor, Ted Lewis, Buck and Bubbles, George Gershwin, the Hall Johnson Singers, James Weldon Johnson, Fletcher Henderson, Clifton Webb, Ada Ward , and J. Rosamond Johnson, she performed at many charity events for various African-American organizations.

In 1928, Wilson returned to Europe with The Black Revue. While she was overseas, Danny Wilson completed a day-long work session with composer Andy Razaf and died from exertion and complications from a long bout with tuberculosis. After a brief period of mourning, Wilson resumed her career. She performed with headliners like Louis Armstrong and Thomas "Fats" Waller, the latter of whom wrote the song "(What Did I Do To Be So) Black and Blue" for Wilson to record on the Brunswick label. He also arranged versions of "My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More" and "I'll Get Even With You" that she recorded for the Victor label. And then the Great Depression put an end to Wilson's recording career.

The Depression was tough on the careers of many performers, especially blues singers. Wilson's determination and extraordinary talent enabled her to survive by singing in revues and appearing with big bands. At the same time, whites regained control of parts of show business they had lost several decades ago; even the Apollo Theater in Harlem, which was "home" to many African-American performers, featured a growing number of white artists. Because she had always been so well received in Europe, Wilson returned there on tour often during the 1930s. Back home and performing at the Apollo, she captured the attention of Charlie Barnet, who led a racially mixed big band. She had often been upstaged by other performers in the upper echelon of talented entertainers, but Barnet convinced her to believe in herself as a superstar. His showcasing of her supreme talents essentially revived her career, and Wilson again became a wellknown performer on the East Coast, singing with other renowned performers, including Eubie Blake in his Shuffle Along shows. For the first time, her reputation reached the West Coast, and she took engagements with both the Orpheum and Bert Levy circuits in Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, and cities in Western Canada. The press described her "sparkling eyes" and "mischievous smile" and noted that she was "a blues singer of international reputation."

Opportunities in films and radio beckoned. After receiving offers for several small roles in movies, Wilson accepted a part in the 1944 Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall classic To Have and Have Not. Her part required her to speak and sing in French; although most of her scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor, Wilson remained very proud of her work in the movie. In radio, she was stereotyped in roles such as a mother-in-law on "Amos 'n' Andy," bit parts in "The Great Gildersleeve," and Aunt Jemima on "The Breakfast Club." Based on the latter role, Quaker Oats hired Wilson for appearances as Aunt Jemima at fundraising events for charity. Civilrights groups protested the company's stereotyping and exploitation, but Wilson saw the character only as another role demanding skilled performances. She was hugely successful, despite the stereotyping, and raised almost $3 million for worthy causes before Quaker Oats was finally persuaded to retire the Aunt Jemima character in 1965.

Wilson's West Coast tours led to another change in her life in 1947, when she married Millard Wilson. They moved to Chicago in the 1950s and were active in black community organizations, civic events, and cultural activities. During the blues revival that gathered steam in the 1960s, Wilson often appeared at folk and blues festivals. In 1972, she returned to the recording studio for the first time in over 40 years, on an album that reunited her with Eubie Blake. On a 1976 album for Delmark Records, she sang classics from the blues and jazz repertoires with a jazz combo that included pianist "Little Brother" Montgomery. When her health began to fail in the mid-1970s, she refocused her energies on two objectives: singing as long as her weak heart permitted and establishing a home for indigent performers. Wilson had always been conservative with her money, but many of her show-business colleagues had not. (Sadly, this latter project never came to fruition.) She continued giving live performances, particularly in the clubs on the north side of Chicago, where, wearing "purple chiffon and a matching turban," she relished every minute of singing ballads and the blues.

Never having attended college in her youth, in 1978 Wilson became an artist-in-residence at the University of Maryland, where she and Sippie Wallace regaled students with the experiences of their heyday to the delight of all. Wilson returned to the New York stage once more in 1980 in Black Broadway, an old-style revue that had Town Hall audiences cheering. That same year, the elegant if elderly Wilson guest-starred at the Newport Jazz Festival and stole the show with a mellow and mischievous rendition of "He May Be Your Man." She died of a brain tumor less than a year later, on March 30, 1981, after some 80 years on the stages of America and Europe.