His grandfather, Ira Kimball, was a percussionist playing on the riverboats that traveled down the Mississippi from St Louis to New Orleans.
Wilson's song "Love March", written with Gene Dinwiddie, was performed at Woodstock and released in 1970 on the live album from the festival.
[citation needed] Wilson was part of the loft jazz scene in 1970s New York, worked as a session musician for Stax Records in Memphis and with Jimi Hendrix at the Cafe Au Go Go and Generation Club in 1968, and recorded with The Last Poets, Fontella Bass, Olu Dara, David Murray, Anthony Braxton, Carla Bley and many others.
Near the end of his life, he was actively pursuing his music career and had been performing regularly at Manhattan's Lower East Side hot spot Deanna's.
[1] As a result of the America's Most Wanted television program, Marvin Slater was arrested and later convicted, in 1997 for premeditated murder, and sentenced to 33 1/3 years in state prison.