Guitarist Hall and singer Wilson are worthy of the title 'Master'

Jim Hall isn't big on awards. Although he was given the prestigious "Jazz Master" honor earlier this year by the National Endowment for the Arts, he tries not to think about it. "Every time I start to feel like a big deal," he says, "the guitar looks at me and says, `Yeah, right -- play me today.' "

Singer Nancy Wilson, another NEA Jazz Master recipient, has her own reason for being skeptical about the award (one of six given this year). Despite having recorded with Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing early in her career, she's never considered herself a jazz artist."I was shocked," Wilson says by phone from her home in California. "The bottom line was I never did the jazz circuit. Until, you know, 10 years ago. But I was amazed and very pleased."

Tomorrow night, jazz fans can see for themselves why each was a deserving recipient. Hall, 73, will perform at Sanders Theatre with a group of Harvard students, concluding a four-day residency as Harvard's visiting jazz artist for 2004. At the same time, Wilson, 67, will perform with Ramsey Lewis at Symphony Hall (with some of the proceeds benefitting the Pine Street Inn).

Hall, who will perform his own works as well as others who've had special significance in his career, lacks the name recognition of Wilson or Herbie Hancock (who plays Symphony Hall Sunday). But he's a guitarist's guitarist. Younger stars such as Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell revere him. "He was just really just a gigantic -- well, he still is -- a huge hero of mine," says Frisell, who took several lessons from Hall after dropping out of Berklee College of Music in 1971.

Hall's own guitar influence was Charlie Christian, who he heard for the first time on Benny Goodman's 78 "Grand Slam."

"Charlie Christian had two choruses on that," Hall says, "and I still remember the moment. `Wow, what is that?' I didn't really know what he was doing, but I thought, `Boy, I sure wish I could do that.' I still feel that way."

After studying composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music Hall moved to LA and stumbled into a gig with someone who was another 2004 NEA honoree, drummer Chico Hamilton.

"And when I was with Chico," he says, "that's where I met Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown."

Hall's 1962 recording with Rollins, "The Bridge," is probably his best-known effort as a sideman, though Hall has worked with numerous other top artists over the years in addition to putting out albums under his own name.

Hall hasn't recorded much lately -- the record industry being in such sorry shape, he says, that he hasn't been asked -- but he's planning to record a series of performances at the Village Vanguard later this month for release via the Internet.

Wilson, on the other hand, is about to put out her second CD of 2004. The first, "Simple Pleasures," is a tasty collaboration with jazz pianist and longtime pal Ramsey Lewis and his trio. The second, "R.S.V.P." (for "Rare Songs, Very Personal"), is due out in a few weeks and undercuts her skepticism about being a jazz artist somewhat by featuring support from such notables as Shearing, Toots Thielemans, Gary Burton, Paquito D'Rivera, Phil Woods, and Bill Watrous.

Wilson's singing career does have a very different arc from those of most jazz musicians. It includes appearances on local television around her native Ohio while still a teenager, and she "worked with Sir Raleigh Randolph and His Sultans of Swing and played with every cabaret that came down the pike," she says. "I was the girl singer in Columbus."

Success came quickly after she moved to New York in late 1959, with early '60s hits, including "Guess Who I Saw Today," "Save Your Love for Me," and the Grammy-winning "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am." By the end of the decade, she was hosting her own Emmy-winning TV show, "The Nancy Wilson Show."

In other words, she was -- and is -- at least as much a pop star as a jazz singer. But she is a jazz fan and booster. In recent years she's hosted an NPR series called "Jazz Profiles," which against her wishes seems to be drawing to close. ("They have no funding for it," Wilson explains.)

She was also delighted to rub shoulders with previous NEA Jazz Masters at January's gala event. To me the most amazing thing was to see - -- and to hear - -- Clark Terry," she recalls. "And Dave Brubeck. And to see Hank Jones, and Gerald Wilson. You know, that's my heart."