page_title: Paul David Wilson
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Paul David Wilson / Biography / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Paul's playing piccolo at Disneyland.
context_page_description: Paul David Wilson is a songwriter, composer, conductor, and music producer. Most of his professional life has been devoted to music, including composing for radio and TV commercials. He became the president of a start-up record label begun by Frank Thomas, who was then the starring player on the Chicago White Sox baseball team. Wilson suffered a massive and debilitating stroke when he was 46 years old. Due to the terribly limiting effects of aphasia, a common but complicated and severe post-stroke condition, he was for a number of years unable to communicate without great difficulty. His fight back to full functioning has been a decade-long challenge that, although largely successful, in many ways still continues.
context_section_description: Paul David Wilson was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was third son to father, Herbert, a classical tenor vocalist and choir director who taught elementary school and retired after becoming a vice-principal of the school.  Wilson's mother, Odessa, was a child prodigy who grew to become a concert pianist and choir director.  She was accomplished in a variety of music genres, but due to her commitment to God, only performed certain styles of music.  Wilson's early lessons on piano came from his mother, and he grew up absorbing the classical and gospel music of the choirs and vocal ensembles his parents directed.
  While still of pre-school age, Wilson began composing simple songs and by the time he began primary school had learned to musically notate the songs he composed.  At age 12, Wilson began organizing "street corner" vocal ensembles to perform his songs at parties and selected school functions.  At 13, he discovered the flute and it soon became his major instrument. Wilson attended James H. Bowen High School in Chicago. In Wilson's fourth year of high school, a friend, Arlene Johnson, persuaded him to run for class president.  He was elected Senior Class President of Bowen in 1970.
  He remembers the day when he was a still-young teenager and "my mother dragged me to a seminar on how to create commercial jingles." The presenters were Dick Marx, whose young son would later become a pop music star known as Richard Marx, who was then Chicago's most prominent master of music for Radio and TV commercials,  and Dr. Thomas Fabish, the concert master of DePaul University’s music department. The presentation involved a big band, top-notch singers and a film. Even as he listened, Wilson was thinking, "I could do that."
  Inspired by Primous Fountain III, a young composer at DePaul University, Wilson enrolled and majored in music composition and theory.  He studied music composition with Dr. Leon Stein, Dr. Phil Winsor and Darlene Cowles, while taking flute with Philip Seeburg and Joseph Kainz.  In 1973, he was one of 20 music students from around the U.S. selected by Ron Logan of Walt Disney Entertainment to participate in a professional "work experience." Wilson remembers it as one of the major highlights of his college career. He wrote at that time in August 1973:
  This work experience for me came at an extremely timely point in my life as far as my musical growth is concerned. Although I had known what I actually wanted to do before starting the program, it has helped me crystallize my personal goals and ambitions, professionally and avocationally, specifically writing, arranging, and performing music in the popular and jazz idioms.
  During his study at DePaul, he founded, performed in, and composed for many ensembles and often organized concerts and productions that featured works by him and others. In his senior year, Wilson was honored by inclusion in "Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges" and graduated in 1975 with a B.A. in music composition and theory.
caption: Wilson playing piccolo at Disneyland -- circa 1973.
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