Lena Wilson - Life and Career

Life and Career

Wilson was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. She was an adopted child. About 1918–1920 she sang with her brother Danny Wilson as a vaudeville act on the TOBA circuit in the South. In 1921 they performed in Louisville, Kentucky, on a bill with Edith Goodall, who soon married Danny and joined their act as a trio. Danny, a pianist who had trained at a conservatory in Charleston, South Carolina, encouraged Lena and Edith to sing not just blues but other song forms as well.

Lena Wilson's major recordings were made between 1922 and 1924, and in 1930. She variously worked with the Nubian Five, Perry Bradford's Jazz Phools, Conaway's Rag Pickers, Fletcher Henderson, Johnny Dunn's Jazz Hounds, Danny Wilson and Edith Wilson. Additionally, she recorded under her own name with an ensemble called the Jazz Hounds, featuring Gus Aiken on trumpet, Garvin Bushell on clarinet, Herb Fleming on trombone, John Mitchell on banjo, and Porter Grainger and Cliff Jackson on piano. Among her recordings are "Memphis, Tennessee", "Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do", "Chiropractor Blues", and "Love Ain't Blind No More".

Wilson sang in many Harlem musical revues throughout the 1920s. She married the violinist Shrimp Jones in the 1930s, and remained a regular performer in New York City into the mid-1930s. She died, reportedly of pneumonia, in New York in about 1939.