Joe Lee Wilson at a Jazz Foundation of America loft party in 2006.
Photo © Frank Beacham
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Joe Lee Wilson was fine jazz singer and a joyous, friendly man. I met him, of all places, at a jazz loft party in Manhattan. He lived in England, he told me, because he was better appreciated by audiences there.
I loved his records and once when I learned he had a new one, I asked him to sell me a copy. He only had one left on this trip to the United States and gave it to me. He was that sort of guy. After that I met him on several of his trips to the United States to perform, mainly at events for the Jazz Foundation of America.
Joe Lee decided on a music career after seeing Billie Holiday perform in 1951. He named his band Joy of Jazz, a name that fit his personality.
Originally from Bristow, Oklahoma, Joe Lee Wilson was an American gospel-influenced baritone with voice somewhere between Billy Eckstine and a Southwestern bluesman. In the early 1970s, he became closely associated with the jazz avant-garde. He worked with the saxophonist Archie Shepp and other exponents of free jazz.
In 1972, he was among the organizers of the New York Musicians’ Jazz Festival, featuring avant-gardists who felt snubbed by the Newport Jazz Festival, which was presented in New York for the first time that summer. A year later, he was on the Newport-New York bill.
At about the same time, Wilson opened the 100-seat Ladies’ Fort in a basement on Bond Street in NoHo. In a time when music clubs were scarce, it became one of the infamous musician-run performance spaces that became known as jazz lofts in Manhattan.
Joe Lee Wilson sang with many of the greats of jazz, including Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Sarah Vaughan, Eddie Jefferson and Kenny Dorham.
He recorded a live radio program at WKCR-FM, Columbia University, on July 16, 1972, that was released as an album, Livin' High Off Nickels & Dimes. Wilson's rendition of Jazz Ain't Nothing But Soul was a radio hit on New York jazz radio in 1975.
Joe Lee died of congestive heart failure. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in November, 2010, where he gave his last public performance.
He was a wonderful artist and will be missed.
