After more than 50 years in the public eye, singer Nancy Wilson is winding down her performance career. "This is it," she says. "I've got grandchildren. I've got a husband. I'm going to be home."

Nancy Wilson isn't my aunt. While my junior high school classmates jammed to Rick James, Parliament Funkadelic and other bearers of the Funk flame, I went around telling people that Nancy Wilson was my aunt. I only did it when the subject of sophisticated black female Jazz singers from Chillicothe came up at the lunch table, in gym or in band class.

It came up more than you think.

On Saturday night, Wilson headlines Jazz singer Kathy Wade's Crown Jewels of Jazz, the fund-raising finale to "The 'Hood Is Bigger Than You Think" tour. Wilson first appeared on the tour in 1999.

Wilson laughs graciously when I tell her by phone about my teenage lie.

"Aaaah, that's so sweet," she says, her speaking voice low like a purr.

Even her laughter sounds like a song.

During her 50-plus year career, Wilson nearly trademarked the telling of a song, thereby preferring the tag "song stylist" above Jazz singer, though it was in Jazz she got her early start.

At 15, she was awarded Skyline Melodies, her own twice-weekly TV show, after she won a Columbus talent show. Wilson finished high school and even started college.

Meanwhile, she'd signed a two-year pact to tour clubs with Rusty Bryant's Carolyn Club group. Bitten by performing and convinced she could make more cash solo, Wilson soon gave up her studies and band duties.

By the time she was 21, Cannonball Adderley was rolling through town and caught Wilson's impromptu gig with a house band.

"If you're ever in New York, look me up," Adderly said, according to the legend.

Ambitious, fearless, confident and talented beyond her years, Wilson got to New York and within five weeks brought to fruition her dream of being managed by the legendary John Levy and of being produced by Dave Cavanaugh at Capitol Records, home of Nat "King" Cole.

By 1961, Wilson dropped the classic single "Guess Who I Saw Today," which gave the world -- jukebox listeners, anyway -- an aural taste of Wilson to come. In the song she deconstructs the ironic lyric of watching her lover from afar. She ends the song in her then Dinah Washington-esque nasal tone but with shades of Billie Holiday at its edge. Stunning.

From there Wilson, one of music's most prolific singers, released an early and non-stop succession of albums -- including 1962's classic Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley, which yielded Buddy Johnson's "Save Your Love for Me," another monster jukebox hit.

In total Wilson amassed 20 chart-topping Capitol singles, surpassing the sales of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and the Beach Boys.

Set on not "playing sawdust," Wilson was committed to finding solid songs that told good stories, to working with the best arrangers and musicians and to diversifying her workload. She nabbed a 1964 Grammy for the single "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" and an Emmy for the 1967-68 Nancy Wilson Show on NBC. Today she hosts NPR's Jazz Profiles, an ongoing radio series she kicked off in 1995 with a 75th birthday tribute to titan Charlie Parker.

In-between, she acted on The Carol Burnett Show, The Flip Wilson Show, Room 222, I Spy, The Parkers and a string of other sitcoms stretching from the 1970s through this century, ending at The Parkers.

At age 67, with 67 albums at her back, Wilson exudes calm and a directness of manner that emanates only from experience. Her latest is R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) on MCG Jazz, a handpicked collection of personal favorites she'd never recorded in her career.

Younger performers could take a lesson from Wilson's example, who says the record business is known for "chewing them up and spitting them out."

"I have a great empathy for the young singers," she says. "Record companies don't nurture their artists. We were a family then. We knew one another and took care of one another. Everything is different now. In my time, there were so many great radio stations playing great music."

Wilson, a doting grandmother, says she doesn't listen to much of what's on radio today.

"Here, maybe age comes into play," she says. "First, I can't understand what they're saying."

Much is recently being made of Wilson's age in the age of crossover queen Norah Jones and festival darling Diana Krall.

"I could care less," Wilson says, mocking the irrelevance of age. "I think it's unusual today, but it's not unusual for people of my era to have longevity. I'm glad I came when I did. I'm glad I'm not 17 or 20 today. I wouldn't do it."

Asked who interests her among the bumper crop of female singers, Wilson goes for the singer's singer.

"I do think Lizz Wright is excellent," she says of the twentysomething Atlanta-born Jazz chanteuse whose debut album, Salt, garnered critical acclaim but missed the mainstream accolades heaped on her white counterparts. "She has such a wide range and a broad range. I love Diana, the way she plays for herself. She can touch me. Norah...," her voice trails off. "But Lizz is dynamic."

After her Memorial Hall stop, Wilson appears with her longtime collaborator Ramsey Lewis in New Mexico and by early November will wind down with her trio in Sao Paolo, Brazil, probably her final live performance.

"I've never counted (my tour dates), but if you check that Web site you'll see there are no more dates." she says. "This is it. I've got grandchildren. I've got a husband. I'm going to be home."