Wesley Wilson

Wilson was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. He played the piano and organ, and his wife and musical partner, Coot Grant, played the guitar and sang and danced.[2]

The duo was variously billed as Grant and Wilson, Kid and Coot, and Hunter and Jenkins, as they went on to appear and later record with Fletcher Henderson, Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong. Their variety was such that they performed separately and together in vaudeville, musical comedies, revues and traveling shows. They also appeared in the 1933 film The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson.[2]

Wilson and Grant wrote more than 400 songs during their career,[6] including "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)" (1933) and "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" (both of which were made famous by Bessie Smith's recordings of them) and "Find Me at the Greasy Spoon (If You Miss Me Here)" (1925)[7] and "Prince of Wails" for Fletcher Henderson. Their own renditions included such diverse titles as "Come on Coot, Do That Thing" (1925), "Dem Socks Dat My Pappy Wore", and the unreleased "Throat Cutting Blues".[2]

Grant and Wilson's act, once seen as a rival of Butterbeans and Susie,[3] began to lose favor with the public by the middle of the 1930s, but they recorded again in 1938.[2]

Their only child, Bobby Wilson, was born in 1941.[8]

By 1946, after Mezz Mezzrow had founded his King Jazz record label, he engaged them as songwriters.[2] This association led to their final recording session, in 1946, backed by a quintet including Bechet and Mezzrow.[8] Wilson retired in ill health shortly thereafter,[6] but Grant continued performing into the 1950s.[2] In January 1953, one commentator noted that the couple had moved from New York to Los Angeles and were in considerable financial hardship.[9]

Wilson died of a stroke, aged 65, in October 1958 in Cape May Court House, New Jersey.[1]

His entire recorded work, with and without Grant, was issued in three chronological volumes by Document Records in 1998.[10]

[11]

[10]