Hattie Wilcox is a composer, songwriter, and singer born in Raleigh, North Carolina. Beginning piano at age 7, she was raised on Chopin, Debussy, hillbilly blues, and soul. A shirtless girl of the south, when Hattie wasn’t in school or outdoors all day running in the woods, Hattie was sitting at the piano.. One summer, her mama drove her to Greensboro every Saturday to study with Hungarian concert pianist, Lili Keleti. Hattie remembers her weekly reward after each lesson–a cheeseburger and fries. Drive-ins were as exciting to little 10-year-old Hattie as Miss Keleti’s mysterious accent and high-drama, arms-in-the-air teaching style.
Wilcox’s Miss Hattie Moran’s Augusta Georgia Rag has been compared to the ragtime music of Pulitzer Prize winning composer William Bolcom.
At 13, Hattie was accepted for study with Loren Withers, head of the music department at Duke University. Not wanting to practice four hours a day like his other students (and her idol Yoko Nazaki), she soon quit. Classical piano on hold, Hattie rediscovered her Irish roots in the lyrical fiddle music of the Blue Ridge Mountains and continued her life-long love affair with soul. Though she was too young to get in, Hattie’s first concert was Sam and Dave. Sweating in their satin shirts open to the waist, this night of music was something quite different from the classical recitals so familiar to Hattie, and Sam and Dave made a lasting imprint in Hattie’s musical heart.
As a teen, Hattie wrote modern poetry and at age 17 her poem “Nursery Man” made it to the final review round at West Coast Poetry Review. She returned to classical piano at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she also continued to write and study poetry. After college she lived for five years without a TV, and that’s when her love of music and poetry came together and she began her career as a songwriter.
You are the k.d. Lang of the blues.—Gerry Casey, Studio7, Ireland
In her first CD, Red Bird Tattoo released in 2008, Hattie sings her own gospel-flavored blues arranged by Nashville’s Johnny Neel, Grammy-nominated artist and songwriter who cut his first single at age 12. In the Red Bird Tattoo band with Johnny is Mark Matejka of Lynyrd Skynyrd on guitar, Brian Davidson also on guitar, Dennis Gully on bass, and Daryl Burgess on drums. Performing original piano works with violinist Christopher Marion, Hattie’s 2012 CD HEX is a collection of instrumentals recorded for film. From the piano and strings thunder-and-lightning energy of Elizabeth, to the blues fiddle of Hands Around My Neck, the plaintive sparseness of piano and violin in Hospital, and Rush on the Savannah’s African drums, violins, and acoustic guitar ensemble, Hattie debuts an impressive collection of distinctive music for film and TV.
James Hebert, San Diego Union
Wilcox’s songs draw on a dizzying and whimsical variety of styles, from ragtime, to the blues, to Debussy.
Living many years in Hawaii and California, Hattie now makes her home in Connecticut. She has two sons: Miles, a cellist and music major in Massachusetts; and Evan, a high school student who sings in chorus and experiments with the poetry and rhythm of rap.