This talented bassist is one of the rare examples of a player on this instrument who functioned well in both the traditional jazz and blues idioms. For example, how many bass players could say they had worked with both
Jelly Roll Morton and
John Lee Hooker? Of course, he played tuba in
Jelly Roll's band, but that was what bass players did back then. One could say they don't make them like they used to, and they made few like
Quinn Wilson.
He started with violin as a child, going on to study both composition and arranging. He began working professionally around the mid-'20s, and was in demand among leaders such as
Tiny Parham, Walter Barnes, and
Erskine Tate, with whom he worked regularly for three years beginning in 1928. His assignment with
Jelly Roll Morton was more of a temporary thing, including recordings done in 1927. He also recorded with the interesting pianist and bandleader
Richard M. Jones in 1929. In the '30s he played with the exciting bands of
Earl Hines serving busily as both a bassist and arranger from 1931 through 1939. During this time he also cut sides on bass with
Jimmie Noone, the low end brass instruments seemingly now collecting dust in the closet. Big changes loomed ahead for him musically in the next few decades. He was innovative in picking up the electric bass, which increased the amount of freelance work he could get. He gigged for more than a decade with the rhythm & blues group of
Lefty Bates and recorded with many blues singers including the great
John Lee Hooker. At least a half-dozen fine
Hooker albums feature
Wilson on bass, and he does a better job following this elusive master of non-chord changes than most bassists. The Fantasy "two-fer" double-album reissue entitled
Boogie Chillun is a good example of what happens when
Wilson boogies with the hook. He also kept up his jazz chops, playing with the clarinetist Bill Reinhardt in the '60s trumpeter Joe Kelly in the following decade. ~ Eugene Chadbourne