Hattie Wilcox loves to play music, but she doesn't love to play by the rules.
JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
Hattie Wilcox takes the mike at her home studio, where she creates music in a rainbow of styles.
|
Radio and record labels demand a sound that fits into pigeonholes. But Wilcox's songs draw on a dizzying and whimsical variety of styles, from ragtime to the blues to Debussy.
And while the business of music still dictates that performing for live audiences and fishing for a record deal are the only sensible paths to success (absent, perhaps, an “American Idol” victory), Wilcox is trying a different route entirely.
Though the singer-songwriter and pianist lives in San Diego, she doesn't perform here; her music is distributed digitally online, through sites such as GarageBand.com, Indie911.com and Iacmusic.com.
Because of that, the North Carolina native, who is 54, might be as well-known in places like Reykjavik as she is in her adopted hometown.
Another site she uses, ArtistLaunch.com, lets musicians track where their listeners live, and Wilcox says that in her first week on the site, “I think I saw (listeners from) five or six countries all over the world. Including small countries, where you might not even think people are hooked in.”
|
MUSICIAN: Hattie Wilcox
STYLES: Blues, classical, ragtime, jazz, country.
SELECTED WORKS: “Miss Hattie Moran's Augusta Georgia Rag,” “Whiskey,” “Elizabeth,” “Chocolate Buttercream.”
KEY COMMENT: “At some point in my life, I said: 'If you love music so much, why don't you make some?' ”
WEB SITE: www.maidenmusic.com
|
|
Wilcox relishes these sites' global scope, because it means music that's otherwise deemed uncommercial can reach the ears of listeners whose tastes are as eclectic as hers.
But Wilcox also is getting her music out into the world another way: through songwriting contests. It's a fitting choice for an artist who has always wanted the spotlight to be on the music, not on her.
“My dream as a kid was to be the hit songwriter, but also the person nobody knew was (behind the music),” she says. “I'm kind of a private person. I never wanted to be out front.”
Her recent contest success, though, is nudging her frontward anyway. Wilcox's song “Whiskey” has reached the finals of the Vantaa Jazz Heritage Association's traditional-blues contest, as one of six songs chosen out of 1,000-plus entries submitted to the Web site Compo10.com.
On June 10, Wilcox will be in Vantaa, Finland, with the other finalists to perform the song. It's one that's been with her in various incarnations for a long time.
“I wrote 'Whiskey' 25 years ago,” she says. “That's given me a lot of pleasure. They say, 'Don't give up on your songs if you really care about them.' ”
Another of her works, the piano instrumental “Miss Hattie Moran's Augusta Georgia Rag,” won its category in last year's West Coast Songwriters contest, and has its own kind of history.
“That was written with my great-aunt in mind,” says Wilcox, a mother of two. “She was a ragtime piano player in Augusta, Ga. I never knew her – she died the year I was born. But my family always told me her musical talent was passed on to me.
To Wilcox, the song's sound evokes the Old South – with, of course, a twist: “My brother-in-law said it sounds like Scott Joplin meets John Cage.”
Wilcox admits her tastes were not quite so wide-ranging when she first took up music.
“As a child, I was quite the classical snob,” with allegiance to Chopin and Debussy, she says.
But other influences soon found their way in.
“I grew up on mountain music” in North Carolina, she says. “And soul music was very big when I was young. When everybody was still fascinated with the Beatles, I was fascinated with the Supremes.”
Wilcox's family moved to Hawaii during her high school years. In college, she studied modern poetry, but dropped out, and for a while mostly gave up music.
Then, at age 28, her passion for both poetry and music “kind of coalesced,” and she decided to devote herself to writing and playing songs.
A couple of decades later, she's still doing it. In addition to getting songs on the Web, and teaching piano in her spare time, Wilcox is now working on a CD produced by Johnny Neel, formerly of the Allman Bros., through his studio in Tennessee.
And when Miss Hattie meets Nashville, it should be something to hear.
