Anna Wilson is a critically acclaimed recording artist with a voice that Jazz Times likens to “crème de cocoa.”  She has garnered rave reviews and been hailed as the queen of the country-jazz duet for her critically acclaimed Countrypolitan Duets album that has her singing alongside Kenny Rogers, Ray Price, Connie Smith, Keith Urban, Lady A, Larry Carlton and others.

Her journey into jazz started at a young age. Inspired by her mother who played piano every evening after dinner, Wilson grew up surrounded by the melodies and songwriting prowess of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and the crooning swagger of Sinatra, Streisand, and the Great American Songbook.

Wilson states, “I often get asked, what is a jazz singer like you doing in a country music town like Nashville?” Wilson reflects and says, “I am a songwriter at heart and my affinity to want to join the songwriting melting pot that exists in Music City is what led me there.”  However, it was her musical roots that brought her to crafting original songs that bridged the gap between the nostalgic sonic landscape of the past while sprinkling in modern day lyrics that could stand on the shoulders of the great Tin Pan Alley composers.

She has recorded four studio jazz albums, Time Changes Everything, Countrypolitan Duets, Jazzbird/Songbird and a holiday classic featuring ten original tunes called Yule Swing. All four records have achieved chart success with her top accolade of hitting #1 on the iTunes Jazz chart for her duet with American Idol’s Matt Giraud for their reimagined version of the classic country song You Don’t Know Me. 

“I actually didn’t start out recording jazz albums,” states Wilson.  She spent the first decade of her career pursuing the singer-songwriter tradition that was birthing the Lilith movement.  Her first album, appropriately titled, The Long Way took 6 years and 4 record labels to make and just recently celebrated its 20^th anniversary.  However, when that era had its day, Wilson found herself being called back to her roots of what she grew up on, and as times changed, so did she. Thus the birth of her first jazz album Time Changes Everything that features all original jazz songs cementing Wilson’s pursuit of writing modern day jazz songs.

Soon after she followed with her holiday album featuring ten original new Christmas songs to celebrate the season called Yule Swing which earned her slots on three Billboard charts, including the No.12 spot on the Overall Jazz chart alongside Diana Krall and Al Jarreau. It is a bold and successful attempt to write classic sounding tunes that can live alongside the holiday standards we know and love.  It’s a sassy, romantic and yet sentimental album that fans return to year after year.  “I always get so tickled when people reach out and say, ‘We’re decorating the tree again to Yule Swing,” Wilson states, she goes on, “That’s how I know we got it right on that album.”

Soon after the brainchild for her revolutionary album, Countrypolitan Duets, was born.  The project creates a magical union of country and jazz by effortlessly blending the genres to form a fresh yet timeless sound that pays homage to Nashville’s musical roots with a legendary list of guest artists like the king of duets, Kenny Rogers, Country Music Hall of Famers Ray Price and Connie Smith, modern superstars like Keith Urban and Lady A and jazz giants Larry Carlton and Rick Braun. “I would describe it as country and jazz shaking hands because it’s a real fusion of two great American musical art forms,” Anna says.  But that modest description is an understatement, according to noted author/music historian Robert K. Oermann, who says, “Top vocalist Anna Wilson has made the first album that fully marries jazz to country music…Anna Wilson is not just ‘shaking hands’ with two Nashville traditions. She is embracing them both. Brilliantly.”

Her Countrypolitan years led to her debut on the Grand Ole Opry, her first #1 song, a North American tour with Canadian crooner Matt Dusk and countless press nods cementing her as the queen of the country jazz duet. The follow up was her most sophisticated jazz album to date called Jazzbird/Songbird which was created with the mindset of old vinyl records when there was an A and B side.  The A side, Jazzbird, highlighted Wilson’s jazz vocal prowess and the B side, Songbird, spotlighted Wilson as the songwriter. Wilson remarks, “This album is a real evolution for me as a jazz artist.  My band and I were at our most mature in the genre. Rather than just moving from song to song, I took the approach of old school record making when albums were created as a complete thought and experience for the listener from beginning to end.”

It is on this effort that Wilson truly marries her jazz singer persona to her pure songwriter spirit.  She adds, “In many ways this album was my swan song to jazz. It was my way of gracefully exiting, and subtlety announcing to myself and fans that songwriting was truly the most important thing to me and that I needed to go back to a troubadour lifestyle and be the ‘songbird’. When I decided to book end the album with two cover songs that have been huge influences, Gershwin’s “Little Jazz Bird” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird”, it seemed like the perfect way to start the journey back home to that troubadour mindset and the making of singer-songwriter albums like those of the folk-rock era in the late 60s/early 70s that I have always felt a kinship with.”

Wilson created timeless, evergreen music during her jazz years that will have the Jazzbird and Songbird in her singing forevermore.