Born in Chillicothe, Ohio and raised in Columbus, Wilson grew up singing in church choirs and winning talent contests. After high school, she sang in local clubs and enrolled in Ohio College, but one semester later said to herself, "Look, girl, if you’re ever going to be a singer you’ve got to stop this stalling around and get out there and sing." In May, 1956, Wilson joined blues tenor saxophonist Rusty Bryant and his band, with whom she toured the states and Canada for two years and cut her first disc "Don’t Tell Me".  In 1958, Wilson left Bryant to follow a trail of solo nightclub engagements from Kansas City to

Montreal. However, when she arrived in New York a year later, it was without a gig or even a place to stay. Wilson took a day job in an office, and held tight until she was asked to fill in for ailing singer Irene Reid at The Blue Morocco, a nightclub in The Bronx. It was there that Cannonball Adderley heard her, and soon the alto giant brought in Capitol producer Dave Cavanaugh, as well as his agent, John Bevy, who remains Wilson’s manager nearly 40 years later. Before 1959 was over, Wilson had attracted record industry attention with one of her earliest singles, "Guess Who I Saw Today?" and her first album ‘Like In Love’. While five of her platters wound up in Billboard’s pop and R&B listings, Wilson would never be a "chart" artist.
   The record industry hadn’t yet reached the point where a quick hit fix was more important than developing a long-time career, and Wilson gradually racked up big sales like many artists in the prolific ‘50s & ‘60s partially because she recorded so much. Wilson’s most frequent studio collaborator in these years was the great Billy May, with whom she cut at least five albums worth of material, including that first set ‘Like In Love’. With May she taped, among other collections, a set of ballads ‘Tender Loving Care’, of which ‘Like Someone In Love’ was the bounciest and a jazz oriented package ‘Something Wonderful’, Wilson’s second LP which guest starred the great Ben Webster. Webster’s unmistakeable tenor blows beautifully breathily behind Wilson on ‘He’s My Guy’ and ‘Call It Stormy Monday’, the latter being a traditional blues that led to an entire album of similarly earthy material by Wilson and May, ‘Nancy Naturally’, including the Ray Charles associated ‘Just For A Thrill’ and a bluesified treatment of Frank Loesser’s Oscar-nominee ‘I Wish I Didn’t Love You So’.               
   The bulk of Wilson’s remaining "basic" albums paired her with two orchestrator conductors of an equally rarified order, pianist Jimmy Jones and alto-saxophonist Oliver Nelson. "I’m jazz-oriented, but I never professed to be a jazz singer" Wilson once said. "I’m not really a pop singer either". I’m one of those people in the middle. I’m a song stylist. I just like to sing good music, tunes that have good range and good lyrics, and I’ve never cared what anybody else calls it. My job is to take good material and deliver it. It’s like being an actress, and that’s really what I’ve been doing throughout my whole career."