Wilson's Midas touch / Her adventurous jazz mixes the old and new

2002-03-17 04:00:00 PDT New York -- Last month when Cassandra Wilson performed a weeklong gig at the Blue Note, she opened her first set with a sultry, percussive take on the Band's tune "The Weight." She wrapped her dark-roast contralto voice around the story song, snapped her fingers and gently bobbed as she spun timeless jazz gold out of a 1968 pop classic. In her pioneering 1993 album, "Blue Light 'Til Dawn," she recast songs by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Robert Johnson into her own image.

"I've never believed in the canonization of jazz," says Wilson, who plays Saturday evening at the Masonic Auditorium as a headliner in this week's SFJAZZ Spring Season 'Jazz Women" series. "Jazz by definition is a music that always has to expand and evolve. There's a place for people to reinterpret the holy book of jazz standards, but there also has to be a place inside the music for those who are adventurous."

Wilson began her singing odyssey in the '80s working with saxophonist Steve Coleman's M-Base collective. "I learned how to mine different kinds of repertoire and to peel apart the structures within songs to understand them," she says. "But the whole thrust of that movement was to incorporate the music of our day to make it personal."

In San Francisco, Wilson will be previewing tunes from her new Mississippi Delta blues-infused album, "Belly of the Sun," due in stores March 26. Most of the sessions were recorded in the Delta blues capital, Clarksdale, Miss.

On the CD, the Mississippi-born, New York-based singer places her signature on songs by a wide range of contemporary jazz, pop and blues composers, including Antonio Carlos Jobim (a playful take on "Waters of March" with an end overdub of a children's choir from M.S. 44 in New York), James Taylor ("Only a Dream in Rio" with allusions to Milton Nascimento's rendition), Jimmy Webb ("Wichita Lineman" with a Caribbean touch), Mississippi Fred McDowell (a deep-blues dip into "You Gotta Move"), Bob Dylan (the melodic gem "Shelter From the Storm") and Robert Johnson (a jaunty "Hot Tamales").

"I'm a child of the '60s," Wilson says during a noontime conversation at the Tribeca restaurant Dylan Prime, a few blocks from her home. "That was a great time for radio. I miss that. I listened to so much music when I was a teenager driving my car around. The radio stations in Jackson played everything from Three Dog Night to James Brown to Jimi Hendrix."

Like her mentor Abbey Lincoln, Wilson is a talented songwriter. She contributes four originals, including the spirited "Drunk as Cooter Brown," the gently swinging gem "Just Another Parade" with guest vocalist India.Arie (written in response to the events of Sept. 11 and recorded in New York) and the poignant "Justice." The latter was written shortly after the presidential election vote counting in Florida. "I was so pissed off," she says. "I had to write something. Sometimes anger pushes you to write songs."

Clad casually elegant in a black sweater blouse and golden-tan skirt, Wilson relaxes over a cup of coffee and talks about recording her new album. She's poised, smiles frequently and laughs freely. She brushes her golden dreadlocks from her face and, as on records and at live shows, snaps her fingers in rhythm for emphasis.

Wilson was inspired to record in the Magnolia State after she produced the album "Oshogbo Town" by childhood friend Rhonda Richmond, who also contributes the song "Road So Clear" and vocals on "Belly of the Sun." (Richmond's CD is the debut disc on Wilson's homespun label Ojah Records, www.jazztrance.com.) "We recorded Rhonda's album in Jackson, and I loved the experience," Wilson says. "It was so sweet working in Mississippi -- the pace is slower and people go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. After being in New York for 21 years, I'd forgotten what it was like to operate under hospitable conditions."

Wilson also wanted to introduce her band -- an unorthodox jazz ensemble made up of two percussionists (Cyro Baptista and Jeffrey Haynes), two guitarists (Marvin Sewell and Kevin Breit) and a bassist (Mark Peterson) -- to the Delta. "I wanted them to see the birthplace of the blues, to get inside of that feeling and hopefully have the experience reflected in the recording." As a result, "Belly of the Sun" is a crossroads of music: jazz at its core, but steeped in shivery Delta blues with shades of lyrical folk, sharp-edged rock and acoustic country as well as Brazilian and Caribbean rhythmic flavors spicing the proceedings.

To get the true down-home atmosphere she was seeking, Wilson traveled around Mississippi to find the appropriate setting for the sessions, settling on a train depot near an authentic juke joint. The sessions started slowly because the mixing board in the recording truck rented from Muscle Shoals studio refused to cooperate. "Over the years it had been used mostly to record gospel groups in a church with two microphones," Wilson explains. "We were trying to do a full 24-track session, but it wouldn't work. It was hot and late at night, the mosquitoes were coming in and everyone was frustrated."

Wilson had a set list in mind, but that changed when one of the engineers noted that the truck had been used to document the Band's "The Last Waltz." He told Wilson that she'd be using the same circuitry as Levon Helm. "Naturally, I started singing 'I pulled into Nazareth feelin' 'bout half past dead' from 'The Weight,' " she recalls. "Kevin Breit heard me and said that'd be great to record. I told him he was crazy because Aretha Franklin had recorded it."

Wilson claps her hands. "Aretha did it. End of story. Book is closed." But Breit worked up an arrangement and convinced her. "That song truly was a weight. It was as if we had to do it, otherwise the truck wouldn't take us anyplace."

On the last day of the sessions, Wilson and company were forced to move because the train depot had been reserved for a wedding. "So Danny set us up in this old boxcar nearby," Wilson says with a laugh. "That took the recording to a whole different level." The two tunes recorded there (McDowell's "You Gotta Move" and Johnson's "Hot Tamales") have a humid, tinny-gritty quality -- perfect for the soundscape Wilson wanted.

Wilson approached the "Belly of the Sun" project in the same spirit that she has built her career on: improvising like a jazz musician. "I don't like the idea of holding fast to a game plan," she says. "It's like planning a trip.

You can lock yourself into a tourist itinerary, but I like to get away from the crowds and explore by following the signposts along the way."

The singer and her band perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at Masonic Auditorium, 1111 California St., San Francisco. The performance is part of SFJAZZ's weeklong " Jazz Women" series of shows featuring Maria Schneider, Marilyn Crispell, Susie Ibarra, Jane Ira Bloom and Jane Bunnett. Tickets: $20-52. Call (415) 788-7353 or go to www.sfjazz.org.