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Willie Wright (born William C. Gathright, July 7, 1939 - died June 29, 2020) was an American soul singer and songwriter.
He was born in Bayland, Yazoo County, Mississippi. In his teens he sang with friends George Bragg and Harry Jensen in a Harlem, New York City doo-wop group, The Persuaders. Later, the three formed the Willie Wright Trio. Wright then began performing as a solo singer and songwriter in clubs in Greenwich Village, and also played flute with The Three Degrees. He turned down offers to sign with a major label, and according to his current record label "deliberately chose artistic freedom over the sharecropper's existence to which many of the best artists of his generation were subjected."
He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he continued to sing in clubs, setting up his own label, Hotel Records, in 1969, and releasing a single. In the early 1970s, he released his first album, Lack of Education, which mostly contained cover versions of other musicians' songs, including Curtis Mayfield's "Right On For The Darkness". In 1976 he began performing for tourists and vacationers at Nantucket. He decided to move there, and started to write more songs. The following year he recorded a second album, Telling the Truth, in New York. The album was described by Allmusic as "a deeply personal set that delved into Wright's attitudes about his life, his relationships with women, and the children he'd fathered but left behind", and featured "spare, intimate arrangements...[and] austere production... dictated by the fact it was recorded in a single day." He again released the album himself, and mainly sold it at performances.
In the early 1990s he moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he continued to perform. He retired from live performance in 2002, after recording and releasing a live album, Brother Bill. "Right On For The Darkness" was included on several compilation albums of rare soul music, and was recognized as a highly collectible record, but Wright remained a relatively obscure figure until 2011, when Telling the Truth was reissued on CD by the Numero Group. The interest that this generated led Wright, despite the onset of Parkinson's disease, to record a new album, This Is Not A Dream, in Burlington, Vermont. The album was issued by Green Coil Records in 2012.
2017
Cannonball Records (4)
7", Single, Mono
2017
2012
Green Coil Records
CD, Album, Dlx
2007
Jazzman
12"
1977
1974
1971
Hotel Records (3)
LP
Winco Records (3)
7", Single, Mono
2013
Rolling Stone
CD, Comp
1998
Hapi Skratch Records
CD
2021
2020
Numero Group
LP, Comp, Ltd
2020
2019
Playback Records (6)
CD, Comp
2019
Playback Records (6), BSMF Records
CD, Comp
2017
Rolling Stone
CD, Comp, Promo
2017
2016
Stag-O-Lee
CD, Comp
2014
History Of Soul
2xCD, Comp
2013
2011
Numero Group
2xCD, Comp, Ltd, Promo, Smplr
2008
BBP Records
2xCD, Mixed, Promo
2003
1999
1994
1983
Spoonful
CDr, Comp
Soul Sides
CDr, Comp, Promo
Not On Label
LP, Comp, Unofficial
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