CoronaVinyl Day 416 (W): The Nancy Wilson Show! by Nancy Wilson

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Today's CoronaVinyl category is "W," and my I listened to multi-genre singer Nancy Wilson's 1965 live album The Nancy Wilson Show!  There's an exclamation mark in the album title.  I wasn't adding that in for excited effect.

Wilson made a name for herself in the early '60s as a jazz and soul singer, and she had a #11 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am," which won her a Grammy for Best R&B Recording.  Later that year, she had a breakthrough live performance at Coconut Grove, which was a prominent nightclub at The Ambassador Hotel in LA.  It was that performance that ended up on The Nancy Wilson Show!, and the album propelled her to fame.  

It's very '60s nightclubby, with a jazz band behind Wilson.  Her voice is pleasant, and you can tell she has stage charisma.  The album went to #24 on the Billboard album chart and #4 on the Billboard R&B album chart.

Wilson went on to not only have a long and fruitful music career, releasing albums into the mid aughts -- and winning back to back Grammys for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2006 and 2007.  She also had a long and successful acting career, including having her own show on NBC for a few years in the late '60s, the aptly titled The Nancy Wilson Show (which won an Emmy), and she also appeared in dozens of TV shows and movies over the following several decades, including I Spy, The Cosby Show, Hawaii 5-0, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Carol Burnett Show, The Sinbad Show, Moesha, and The Parkers.  She died in December 2018 at the age of 81.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Ten Good Years"
This one is a tongue-in-cheek jazz song with the punchline, "like it or not, a woman only has ten good years."  I've known some with fewer than that.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "I'm Beginning to See The Light"
This is a rousing rendition of a Duke Ellington song (also recorded previously be Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin, and Frank Sinatra, among others.  For my fellow Swingers fans, you'll recognize the song, as Darin's version plays over the ending credits of the film.