Jen Wilson

Jen Wilson (died June 2023) was a Welsh jazz musician, archivist, and writer. She founded Jazz Heritage Wales in 1987, contributing her own oral histories told by women who worked in the Jazz scene. These recordings are now held in the British Library Sound Archive and have formed the basis for several BBC documentaries.

Personal life Wilson was born and raised in Mount Pleasant, Swansea. She was a self-taught jazz pianist and enjoyed performing regularly in pubs throughout Wales. Wilson was educated at Swansea Secondary Technical School for Girls, which she left at 16. She later worked as a secretary for the British Anthracite Company, as a care worker in London, and an auxiliary nurse at Mount Pleasant Hospital until the 1980s. Wilson then began working as an administrator at Swansea University, before retiring in 1996. In 1965, she married her husband, Mike Wilson whom she had three children with. The charity was later renamed to become Jazz Heritage Wales. In 2008 the Swansea University agreed to house the Jazz Heritage Wales collection, which contains records dating back to 1900. It is considered one of the few pieces of research that considers the role of women in British jazz. It is also home to series of oral histories that Wilson recorded with women who worked in the jazz scene. Wilson began recording these histories while working at Swansea University, The recordings are also archived in the British Library Sound Archive. Wilson also contributed to the 2014 BBC Radio 4 show, The Lost Women of British Jazz, produced by Hannah Loy and Janine H Jones.

In October 2004 her research around a freed slave who escaped to Swansea led to Swansea College performing a stage show at the Dylan Thomas Centre for Black History Month. The play was centred around Willis, who escaped slavery in 1832, working on a galley that arrived in Swansea in February 1833, where he was declared a free man by the mayor.

Wilson performed at the opening of the Brecon Jazz Festival in 2016. She was appointed Honorary Professor of Practice by University of Wales Trinity St David the same year. During the COVID-19 pandemic Wilson hosted a virtual tour of the Jazz Heritage Wales exhibition How Jazz Came To Wales for the Brecon Jazz Festival. The exhibition opened in September 2019.

In 2021 Jessie Donaldson, a Welsh anti-slavery campaigner, was memorialised with a blue plaque following nomination to the Swansea Council by Wilson. Wilson had extensively documented Donaldson's life and activism in the Underground Railroad during the 1850s.

Wilson formed the all women Allstars Swing Band, based in Swansea.

Wilson died in June 2023, aged 78.

In 2015, she was awarded the Points of Light Award by David Cameron for her work with Jazz Heritage Wales.