Cassandra Wilson Dies at 70: 'Last Great Jazz Singer'
Cassandra Wilson, a two-time Grammy winner for jazz vocals, has died at 70 in her native Jackson. Jon Batiste and the city's mayor paid tribute, and a producer calls her the last great jazz singer.
American jazz singer Cassandra Wilson has died at 70 in her native Jackson, Mississippi. Her management announced the news, which was picked up by American news agencies and Serbian outlets citing Tanjug.
“Cassandra Wilson passed peacefully at her home, surrounded by family, close friends and her manager,” her management said in a statement.
Sources differ on the exact date of her death. American network NBC says only that she died “Tuesday morning,” without giving a specific date. Tanjug, our own agency, puts the date of death at September 3. An independent check, backed by an official confirmation from Hinds County Coroner Jeremiah Howard, shows Wilson actually died on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.
Who paid tribute
The first to speak was musician Jon Batiste, who once shared a stage with Wilson. In a statement on her death, he said:
“She had a distinctive vocal tone, phrasing, and her approach of blending folk, R&B and diasporic music with experimental and popular genres left a huge impression on me.”
Alongside the statement, Batiste posted on Instagram a clip of himself and Wilson performing together on Brazilian television in 2009, writing that she was one of the first artists to take him on a world tour.
Jackson Mayor John Horhn also spoke, saying the city had “lost an extraordinary daughter, and the world a singular musical voice.” He added:
“Cassandra Wilson carried the sound, spirit and history of Mississippi with her, wherever her music reached.”
The most striking words, though, had come earlier from influential producer T Bone Burnett, who worked with Wilson on her seventh album, “Thunderbird,” in 2006. According to Tanjug, he said of her:
“She’s the last great jazz singer. I mean, maybe someone else will come along, but as far as I can see on the horizon, she’s the last real one. In many ways… she may be one of the greatest of all time.”
Tanjug adds that the same producer once said that “Cassandra may be the best singer in the world.”
From Jackson to the world’s biggest stages
Wilson was born in 1955 in Jackson, the daughter of musician Herman Fowlkes and teacher Mary Fowlkes. She started learning piano at six and also played clarinet in school orchestras. While studying at Millsaps College and Jackson State University, she performed in cafes and cover bands.
In the early 1980s she learned from jazz greats in New Orleans, then moved to New York, where she joined Steve Coleman’s M-Base collective and became its lead vocalist. There she built the distinctive, genre-defying voice that blended blues, folk, pop, country and R&B.
She won the Grammy Award twice, both times for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Sources again disagree on the second win. Both agree the first album, “New Moon Daughter,” dates to 1997. For the second, “Loverly,” Tanjug gives the year as 1999, while NBC says the award came in 2009.
Time magazine named her America’s best female singer in 2001.
In 2015, Wilson held a special concert at the famed Apollo Theater marking the 100th anniversary of Billie Holiday’s birth, and that same year released her final album, “Coming Forth by Day,” a tribute to Holiday.
Her last major honor came in 2022, when Wilson received a NEA Jazz Master fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the highest honors given to jazz musicians in the United States.
