In Memory of Indiana’s Greatest Singer-Songwriter,
Bill Wilson
by Jeff Foster
With a husky, soaring baritone voice and a sensitive yet kinetic acoustic guitar style, Bill was a mighty musical force to be reckoned with, a classic type-A personality who gave 100% to every song, and every live performance.
Back in the 70s through the early 90s, Bill Wilson was widely considered Indiana’s finest singer-songwriter. Bill was certainly the hardest-working, devoted to his art every minute of the day. He wove elements of folk, country, rock and blues into a sometimes delicate, sometimes jaw-busting canvas for his thoughtful, provocative lyrical excursions.
Backstory
Died November 25, 1993 in Indianapolis, IN.
Bill provided vocals for Herman Nelson’s songwriting demo LP released by Sonobeat in minute quantities, and added vocals to a few songs on legendary Texas blues-psych band Mariani’s Sonobeat LP. He joined Indianapolis band Pleasant Street upon moving back to Indiana, but their LP, also recorded at Sonobeat, was not released and he left the band.
He relocated to Bloomington and was signed to Columbia Records, which released his best-known album, 1973’s Ever Changing Minstrel; it was reissued on CD by Tompkins Square in 2012. Following that, he issued two LP’s on local labels BRBQ Records and Redbud Records, Talking To Stars (1976) and Made In The USA (1980). His final release was Traction In The Rain, self released on CD in 1992. Wilson performed live on a regular basis, appearing at many central Indiana clubs, including The Hummingbird, The Patio, The Vogue, The Bluebird, Crazy Al’s, The Red Dog Saloon and others.A number of his songs are well remembered, including “Made in the USA”, “Soldiers Song”, “Indiana Song” and a significant contribution to Dire Strait’s hit “Sultans of Swing” although he was not given co-writers credit. He later told an audience he bought a truck with the money he made off the song after it became a hit.
Wilson felt deeply about his Vietnam experience and reached out to other vets especially those traumatized by the war. His “Soldiers Song” is about vets coming home “on a day the band forgot to play.”From the 70s through the early 90s, Bill Wilson was considered by many to be Indiana’s finest singer-songwriter. (source)
My Connection to Bill Wilson
I first met Bill way back in the mid-to-late 1970s in Bloomington, IN, in the wake of Ever-Changing Minstrel, the 1973 Columbia Records release for which he is best known, produced by Dylan producer Bob Johnston — check the Johnston interview:
The details surrounding my initial meet-up with Bill are kind of a blur (as is most of the 70s, for that matter), but we hit it right off. I was soon to do a few high-profile gigs in Indianapolis with Bill, most notably an outdoor concert at the 1st WFBQ Raft Race, and a concert at the Murat Temple in Indianapolis.
Both shows were in a trio format with Bill on vocals, acoustic guitar and harmonica, along with my old friend John “Orie” Stith on bass. I played my old Gibson J-200 (circa 1950), an Alvarez classic nylon-string guitar, and my old 1908 H-style Gibson mandola, the sound of which Bill loved and used on several of his most popular tunes.
My guitar and mandola work is featured on two of Bill’s albums, Talking To Stars (1976) and Made In The USA (1980).
Finding Bill’s Music
I’ve maintained a tribute page to my buddy Bill here in StringDancer for many years now, and every so often I’ll get an email from a Wilson fan, looking for his music… which is problematic at best, given that his work was recorded and mastered analog-only, and never remastered to digital. While Columbia’s Ever-Changing Minstrel is ostensibly still available online , as of this writing it is sold out, with (to my knowledge) no plans for another edition in the works. Bill’s later albums were all self-released, now long out-of-print and currently unavailable.
However, an enterprising YouTuber named Kevin Holsapple managed to cobble together a pretty respectable compilation of Bill Wilson’s music (click the icon in the upper-right corner to access the playlist if you’re looking for a particular song):
Sultans Of Swing
A little-known factoid is Bill was actually the uncredited co-writer of the breaker hit by Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits band, “Sultans Of Swing”. You can definitely hear Bill’s unmistakable way with words in the lyric. In this 1991 live performance, Bill recounts the tune’s origins, saying:
I do this thing I co-wrote about, I guess, its been about 12 years ago… I wrote the lyrics and a friend of mine used to work a lot of sessions for my old producer, Bob Johnston, and worked a session with this fellow from England by the name of Mark Knopfler. Has his own group over there called Dire Straits. He had this little melody. It sounded like “Walk, Don’t Run”. And he had this little story concerning a band that nobody wanted to listen to. Only a few people show up to hear. So we got together one night after the session and tossed these lyrics around on a napkin, and I guess I wound up writing most of the lyrics to the tune… made enough money to buy a new Blazer that year I remember, so didn’t do too bad. It goes like this…”:
More Bill Wilson Links
• CLICK HERE for a PDF of the Nuvo Magazine, Dec 1993 article on Bill’s passing.
• “Torn Flag”, a clip from “Bill Wilson Memories & Music”, edited May16, 1994, Produced by Indiana Public Television WITU, the actual recording date of the special is unknown, but it appears to have been shortly before Wilson’s death. “Torn Flag” was one of the last songs Wilson ever recorded:
