Biography
Closely tied to bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, Wilcox served as principal arranger during the orchestra’s peak years in the 1930s and later directed the ensemble after Lunceford’s passing. Their first meeting occurred in the mid-1920s at Fisk University, where Wilcox performed in the campus band Lunceford led. Around 1927 he took jobs with groups in New Jersey, then returned to Lunceford in 1929 and remained until the leader died of a heart attack in 1947. For a while Wilcox shared the podium with tenor saxophonist Joe Thomas; he assumed full control in January 1949 and maintained the orchestra into the early 1950s. Afterward he worked as a soloist around New York, including nearly ten years at Café Riviera. In the 1950s he and Teddy McRae started the R&B label Raecox, and he held executive posts at the Riviera and Derby companies. Shortly before his death in 1968, Wilcox performed in Canada with “Big Chief” Russell Moore.