but. In addition to Wilson's originals, the album found her singing renditions of songs by Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, and Ann Peebles. She continued on this path with New Moon Daughter in 1995, peppering her excellent originals (notably  Little Warm Death  and  Solomon Song ) with covers of Neil Young, U2, Hank Williams, and Monkees tunes.

 I continue to choose the path I take musically,  she told The New York Times in 1994.  And it's not motivated by becoming famous or having a lot money, or any other pop motivation. 

Her next album, Rendezvous (1997), found her giving new arrangements to standards, notably a marvelous  Tennessee Waltz,  with pianist Jacky Terrasson.  She draws things out of these songs that even the composers wouldn't recognize,  the Rolling Stone guide wrote as a compliment. She explored Miles Davis' catalog on Traveling Miles (1999). Later, she returned to jazz standards on Loverly. She released the final solo album of her career, Coming Forth by Day, in 2015. It was an homage to Billie Holiday, released on what would've been Holiday's 100th birthday.

As a collaborator, Wilson recorded albums with Coleman, Greg Osby, and Wynton Marsalis. With Marsalis, she portrayed the character Leona in the recoding of his Blood on the Fields oratorio, the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize.

She appeared as a guest on the Roots'  Silent Treatment  and  One Shine.  She also recorded variously with Terence Blanchard, Olu Dara, Charlie Haden, Elvis Costello, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Luther Vandross, among others. Her own 2010 album, Silver Pony, featured several notable guests including John Legend, Jon Batiste, and Ravi Coltrane.

Wilson was nominated for four Grammys, winning twice, in 1997 for her New Moon Daughter album and in 2009 for Loverly, both in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category. She also won the Django D'Or, the Edison Music Award, and a Mississippi Blues Trail marker.

She connected her success to the spirit of jazz in its original form.  I think people tend to forget what jazz was like in the beginning,  she told the Times.  It's not a form of music that came out canonized and etched in stone. It comes from people absorbing what they live. So I don't have a problem doing music that's popular. Billie Holiday and even Charlie Parker interpreted what was known as the popular music of that time. I don't see any difference between that and what I'm doing. 

This article was originally published on Rolling Stone.