Wilson, Edith Goodall (06 September 1896–30 March 1981), blues and popular singer, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of Hundley Goodall, a schoolteacher, and Susan Jones, a housekeeper. She grew up in a mixed middle-class and working-class black neighborhood of small, neat cottages. Like many African Americans, she began singing in the church and community social clubs. She completed her elementary education but dropped out of school by age fourteen. Her first taste of performing in an adult venue came in the White City Park talent shows in Louisville.

Eventually, Edith Goodall teamed with pianist Danny Wilson and his sister, Lena, a blues singer. The trio performed in Kentucky and Ohio and, later, Chicago, where jazz was making inroads. Edith Goodall married the pianist around 1919. Danny Wilson had had some musical training, which enabled him to teach his wife how to use her voice; he also encouraged her to sing a variety of ballads, light classics, and blues. After performing in small clubs around Chicago for two years, the trio moved to Washington, D.C., in 1921. Their musical exposure in the nation’s capital and in clubs around Atlantic City, New Jersey, helped prepare them for the much tougher competition of New York City.

Edith Wilson was appearing in the musical revue at Town Hall, Put and Take, when Columbia Records signed her in September 1921 as the label’s first blues singer. Johnny Dunn’s Original Jazz Hounds, with Danny Wilson on piano, backed her on the first release, “Nervous Blues,” by Perry Bradford. From 1921 until 1925 Wilson recorded thirty-one vocals, most of them blues, but a few of them humorous novelties such as “He May Be Your Man (But He Comes to See Me Sometime).” (This song was among the most popular with Wilson’s audiences during blues festivals in the 1970s.) Wilson’s voice, a light, plaintive soprano, was more refined—some jazz critics termed it “citified”—than those of most blues singers. This was partly the result of the training she received from her husband, who advised her to continue expanding her repertoire. In all, she made about forty recordings during the 1920s.

Wilson’s stage career received a boost when she toured briefly on the TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association) circuit to promote her recordings. A fine comedienne, she was sought to play roles in shows that featured both comedy and singing. She appeared in Lew Leslie’s first major venture in producing black shows at Manhattan’s Plantation Room in 1922. Noted for her blues and for songs featuring double entendres, she also sang at the Cotton Club in Harlem.

Wilson’s first trip abroad was with Leslie’s Dover Street to Dixie, which starred Florence Mills and played London’s Pavilion in 1923. A theatrical version of the revue, Dixie to Broadway, opened at New York’s Broadhurst Theater in 1924, then toured until early 1925. Wilson and Doc Straine were partners from 1924 until 1926, with Wilson singing the blues as part of their comedy routine. They traveled on the Keith theatrical circuit and, according to press reports, were highly popular. They also recorded two comedy songs about a bossy woman. That personality often became a Wilson feature in her later Broadway shows. Subsequent revues in which she traveled abroad included Chocolate Kiddies and two more Leslie shows, Blackbirds, 1926 and Blackbirds of 1934. Wilson was a quick study with languages. Her fluency enabled her to perform blues and popular songs in French and German as well as the languages of other countries where she appeared.

Wilson’s versatility kept her in demand in revues in the United States and overseas throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Her vocal style easily adjusted to the changing tastes and big band arrangements of the swing years. During the 1930s she was featured on occasion with orchestras led by Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, Lucky Millinder, Noble Sissle, and Sam Wooding. Later, in 1945, she worked with Louis Armstrong in Memphis Bound, but the Broadway show, excepting her own performance, received poor notices.

At the end of the 1930s Wilson moved to Los Angeles and began a new phase of her career with a nonsinging role in the film I’m Still Alive (1940). She appeared in other movies, her most important part coming in the classic To Have and Have Not (1944) that starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. During the mid-1940s Wilson toured on the major Burt Levy and Orpheum circuits and served with the USO.

Wilson, who had been widowed in 1928, married her second husband, Millard Wilson, in 1949. They had no children. Eventually, they moved to Chicago and remained together until her death.

Wilson’s career took a social and political twist when she was signed by the Quaker Oats Company to be the radio voice of its Aunt Jemima character for pancake mix commercials. The opportunity resulted from her portrayal of the Kingfish’s wife on the “Amos ’n’ Andy” radio show. In her Aunt Jemima role she toured on behalf of many charitable projects. Notwithstanding her charitable activities, however, black civil rights leaders and influential activists criticized her for what they saw as the exploitation of her talents to promote minstrel show stereotypes. She refused to give in to the pressure, insisting that her work was for good causes for which she was not being given proper credit. Wilson was dropped from the role in 1965, and eventually Quaker Oats bowed to criticism and retired the Aunt Jemima character.

Nearly seventy, Wilson resumed her singing career, performing regularly at clubs in the Chicago area. She appeared on local television shows and recorded an exemplary album for the Delmark label in 1976. At eighty, she was singing with the verve and sophistication that were hallmarks of her younger years. She performed in local and national blues and jazz festivals, including the 1980 Newport Jazz Festival, and made her final appearance on Broadway in a 1980 show, Blacks on Broadway, produced by Bobby Short. She died in Chicago, having remained a highly regarded performer to the end.