Soft Songs, Hard Truths

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

IT'S TRUE THAT SINGERS SING NOTES, but the word evokes bland images of Post- its on refrigerator doors, "call me" messages scrawled on a pad near the telephone, disposable e-mail hurriedly read and quickly spiked. There has to be a classier term for what Cassandra Wilson sings. Notes just doesn't cover it. You'd have to say that she sings entire epistles, love letters to the soul; every sound that leaves her lips is filled with paragraphs of emotion, written lovingly in longhand with pen and ink.

Wilson established a reputation as a comer on her 1988 album Blue Skies, in which she stunningly reinterpreted such standards as Shall We Dance and I've Grown Accustomed to His Face. Ever since, critical accolades have been rolling in. Recently, Billboard crowned her "heir apparent to divas Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Abbey Lincoln and Sarah Vaughan." Critics aside, top jazz performers want to work with her. Wilson is the featured vocalist in Blood on the Fields, a new big-band piece written by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis that can be heard on National Public Radio this week. It's yet another sign that Wilson, 38, is no longer on her way, she's arrived. She's the most exciting jazz vocalist of her generation.

Anyone doubting that need only listen to her latest CD Blue Light 'Til Dawn, an enchanting and diverse collection that includes jazz renditions of songs by folk rocker Joni Mitchell and bluesman Robert Johnson. The first track, You Don't Know What Love Is, is slow and spare and recalls Billie Holiday without imitating her. "You don't know how hearts burn/ For love that cannot live yet never dies," Wilson sings, her rich alto conjuring feelings of midlife rust and heartbreak. Wilson's voice never pushes to hit any big, crass Star Search notes; this is a quiet album of submerged pain. Redbone, written by the singer, consists only of her molasses vocals, the twanging of a pedal steel guitar and African-tinged percussion. On the album's best track, a cover of Van Morrison's Tupelo Honey, Wilson reveals the song's soul not through vocal gymnastics, but by lingering caresses of each line. She creates emotional tension by holding power in reserve.

Since Blue Skies, Wilson has given birth to a son, now five years old, and has separated from her husband. "I've gone through a lot of changes," she says. "I've been peeling away the layers and looking at who I am and what I grew up listening to." Wilson learned about the ingredients for Blue Light's gumbo of jazz, blues and folk as a child in Jackson, Mississippi. Her father was a jazz guitarist, and she remembers Motown, Bob Dylan and classical music being played around the house. With this background, Wilson brings a lot of sophistication and insight to the songs she sings. Aware of her own musicianship, she says that the contributions of women jazz singers are not properly recognized. "People like Billie Holiday, Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, have revolutionized not just vocalese but jazz itself," she says. "There is a tendency to gloss over what female singers bring to jazz."

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a prophet who rebuffed the advances of Apollo, God of Music, and was thus given the curse that her prophecies would never be believed. The Gods of Pop Music would love to see Cassandra Wilson $ submit, and she sometimes responds to the pressure to seek a larger audience. This summer, for instance, she will sing the title track on When Doves Cry, an album of Prince songs performed by jazz musicians and vocalists. But even when covering pop songs, she gives them jazz depth. "I've gone too far into jazz to ever abandon it," she says. That's one prophesy that no one should doubt.