Hattie Wilcox is a songwriter, singer, and composer 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 played piano for her mama, her “Big Mama” Aunt Hattie, and her music teacher of many years, Annette Kahn. One summer, each week her mama drove her two hours—one way—to Greensboro so she could study with Hungarian concert pianist, Lili Keleti. Hattie remembers her weekly reward after each lesson–a cheeseburger and fries. The early days of drive-ins were as exciting to little Hattie as Miss Keleti’s mysterious accent and high-drama, arms-in-the-air teaching style.
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 familiar to Hattie, another imprint deep in Hattie’s musical heart.
As a teen, Hattie wrote some decent 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. After college she lived for five years without a TV, and her love of music and modern poetry came together when she began to write songs.
Hattie’s first CD, Red Bird Tattoo released in 2008, features the arrangements of Nashville’s keys and harp monster 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, Dennis Gully on bass, and Daryl Burgess on drums.
Living many years in Hawaii and California, Hattie now makes music from her home in Connecticut. She has two sons: Miles, a cello player and music major in Massachusetts; and Evan, a high school student who sings in chorus and experiments with the poetry and rhythm of rap.