CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Coot Grant

American classic blues and vaudeville singer and songwriter

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ1129906 ↗
Source-derived summary

Coot Grant (June 11 or 17, 1893 – December 26, 1970) was an American classic female blues, country blues, and vaudeville singer and songwriter. On her own and with her husband and musical partner, Wesley "Kid" Wilson, she was popular with African American audiences from the 1910s to the early 1930s.

Biography

Grant was born either Leola B. Henton or Leola B. Pettigrew in Birmingham, Alabama, one of fifteen children in her family. The first part of her stage name was derived from her childhood nickname, Cutie. She began working in vaudeville in 1900 in Atlanta, Georgia, and the following year toured South Africa and Europe with Mayme Remington's Pickaninnies. She was sometimes billed as Patsy Hunter. In 1913, she married the singer Isiah I. Grant, and they worked on stage together before his death in 1920. She married Wesley Wilson the same year. He used several stage names, later being billed as Catjuice Charlie (in a brief duo with Pigmeat Pete), Kid Wilson, Jenkins, Socks, and Sox Wilson. He played the piano and organ, while she played the guitar, sang and danced.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Coot Grant” is american classic blues and vaudeville singer and songwriter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Coot, Grant and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1893, 1970, 1900, 1913—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1893-06-17. For this dossier, Coot, Grant and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american classic blues and vaudeville singer and songwriter” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1129906. VIAF identifies the subject as 42029901. The Library of Congress control number is n95042113. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1893, 1970, 1900 and 1913.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Coot Grant”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Coot Grant primary sources, Coot Grant archive and Coot research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Coot Grant”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Coot Grant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.