Cassandra Wilson, a two-time Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist, died on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. She was 70 years old. Her longtime manager, Robert Torry, announced her death in a statement. A specific cause of death was not reported.
Born Cassandra Fowlkes on Dec. 4, 1955, Wilson was the daughter of two educators; her father, Herman B. Fowlkes, was also a musician who played bass and guitar. After earning a degree in mass communications from Jackson State University, she moved to New York in the early 1980s. There, she became a member of the M-BASE Collective and began a recording career that spanned 40 years, blending jazz with blues, country, and pop influences.
Wilson received critical recognition for her 1993 album *Blue Light 'til Dawn* and won Grammys for Best Jazz Vocal Album for *New Moon Daughter* (1996) and *Loverly* (2008). In 1997, she was a featured performer in Wynton Marsalis' oratorio *Blood on the Fields*, the first jazz work to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Music. She was named a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master in 2022.
Critics, including Ben Ratliff, noted that her style functioned as a bridge between rural Southern roots music and urban New York jazz. Her career saw the release of over a dozen albums, ranging from her 1985 debut *Point of View* to her 2015 tribute to Billie Holiday, *Coming Forth by Day*. She collaborated with artists ranging from Wynton Marsalis to the hip-hop group The Roots.
Wilson is survived by her son, Jeris. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.