Edith Wilson - Blues and Jazz Original
Edith Wilson (Goodall) was born to middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky. Wilson (1896-1961) began a career in music entertainment. She married pianist Danny Wilson, and they performed in Chicago, Washington, D. C., and New York.
In 1921, Wilson signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Backed by Johnny Dunn (of Louis Armstrong's band) and the Original Jazz Hounds, Wilson cut "Nervous Blues," "Vampin' Liza Jane." Wilson shifted her attention to theatrical routines. She starred in "The Plantation Revue," "Creole Follies," and "Hot Chocolates." Wilson cultivated a large following with white and upscale black audiences. Edith Wilson incorporated blues songs into a musical repertoire that was built mainly from cabaret and show tunes. Wilson helped introduce the blues to white audiences, both in the U.S. and in Europe. The exposure she and other blues-flavored cabaret performers gave the music in non-black markets enabled the genre to assume a stronger posture in pre-World War II pop music. Between the 1930s and 1940s, Wilson performed in theaters and cabarets with big bands and revues; she even appeared in a few films.
