Class Is One Thing That Never Passed Wilson By

SAN DIEGO —  Good, old-fashioned class. It’s an intangible ingredient that is sorely lacking in much of today’s jazz and pop music.

For example: Harry Connick Jr. thinks he has class, but doesn’t (funny accent, tries too hard). Wynton Marsalis has class, but he wants to rub your nose in it, which cancels it out. Frank Sinatra? He used to epitomize class--now he’s more like a sad, old caricature of what used to be.

Nancy Wilson, who will perform tonight at Copley Symphony Hall, still has class. It’s in the smooth, velvet-lined vocals and the sleek, sequined evening gowns. It’s in the regal ease with which she carries herself, the warm but supremely self-confident manner in which she speaks and delivers a song.

Treading the turf between jazz, pop and R & B vocal styles since the late ‘50s, Wilson has existed on the fringes of the charts, never as popular as a Diana Ross, not as underappreciated as an Abbey Lincoln.

She’s had her share of hits over the years and has been nominated for numerous Grammy awards, winning in 1964 for “How Glad I Am.” Other hits include “Save Your Love for Me” (with Cannonball Adderly) in 1962; “Face It Girl, It’s Over” in 1968, and “You’re As Right As Rain” in 1974. She’s won Playboy and Downbeat polls for “Female Vocalist of the Year,” briefly hosted her own television show on NBC, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But these career highlights all took place in decades past.

In more recent years, Wilson has had problems gaining the attention of American record labels and audiences, and so has concentrated her efforts on more appreciative Japanese audiences.

During a recent telephone conversation from a New York hotel room, Wilson spoke openly about her difficulties with American labels. She was suffering from laryngitis at the time, and although she had trouble speaking with any volume, her message came through loud and clear.

“I was always able to get a decent record deal overseas as opposed to here,” she said. “That’s due to the record industry, not the people or fans,” Wilson said. “Over here, it’s a very money-oriented, bottom-line kind of a place. Over there, they care more for the artist. I have just as many fans here as overseas, but I think there would be even more if my albums were promoted with as much energy and enthusiasm, if they’d put the kind of money behind them like they do other things.

“The Top 10 is all the record companies over here are concerned with. They force-feed the public 10 records that they put all their money and emphasis on, and that leaves a lot of people who should be in the mainstream on the outside. That’s just not fair. There’s a lot of wonderful people who’ve been recording and performing for years who just can’t get any kind of attention and appreciation.”

Wilson’s contention may be true, but changing times have always brought shifting tastes in music. Wilson’s smooth brand of middle-of-the-road pop, for better or worse, is becoming more anachronistic with each passing year. One generation’s cream is another’s corn.

But Wilson, 55, sees a passing of the musical torch from herself to a few newish artists, and feels optimistic about the future of pop vocals.

“I find that Sade, Whitney Houston, Anita Baker and them are very much in the mold of Dinah (Washington) and myself,” she said. “Times are changing, but the music will live on. Younger writers are starting to write better music. They’re out there.”

One of Wilson’s favorite contemporary composers is Barry Manilow, who co-wrote and co-produced the music on her latest album, “With My Lover Beside Me.” Manilow wrote the music for the album around a stack of unused lyrics by the late Johnny Mercer, who, with standards like “Blues in the Night,” “Moon River,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “One for My Baby” and “Satin Doll” to his credit, is considered one of the most important songwriters of the 20th Century.

Manilow “did a superb job--Mercer would have been very pleased,” Wilson said. “People who didn’t get to hear ‘2 a.m. Paradise Cafe’ (Manilow’s jazz-based album of 1984) may have been surprised at his feel for the music, but Barry’s always been in there, so it didn’t surprise me. I’d always known that there was a real fine musician in there. He’s also a delightful person, a real pleasure to work with.

“I’ve sung a lot of Mercer lyrics in my career,” she said. “You find yourself singing a lot of Mercer, not even aware of the fact that it’s him. His music was there--it’s simple and it’s very poetic.”

Though Wilson expresses admiration for the timeless pop of Mercer and performs much middle-of-the-road material, she cites raucous R & B belters such as Ruth Brown and Louis Jordan as being among her prime influences, and her best known older material is jazz- to R & B-based.

So the question remains, is Nancy Wilson a pop singer, a jazz singer or an R & B singer?

“All or none, depending on my mood,” she said, laughing. “I just sing, I don’t put labels on it. It’s a natural thing. I pick songs that I happen to love a lot, in terms of lyric content. I’m probably jazz-oriented, but jazz purists wouldn’t call me jazz 25 or 30 years ago; they would have said I was in the pop category. I guess it’s all in the ear of the listener. Let them decide.”

* Nancy Wilson will appear tonight at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St. Tickets are $31.50, $26.50 and $19.50 and are available through TicketMaster. Show starts at 8 p.m. Comedian Karen Addison opens.