to subtly reveal the underlying inequities that Black artists and women faced in the music industry, often using their own words. In a 15 July 1960 obituary in Jazz News, Wilmer quotes Memphis Slim: "I also wanted to get my own publishing company, but the record men don't want to hire a guy who's got his own publishing company," revealing the difficulty he faced as a black artist. Speaking of her friendship with the influential lyricist, music critic, interviewer and singer Kitty Grime, Wilmer demonstrates her love, respect and admiration, while also revealing the masculine bias in the world of music: "It was during this heady period that we met, at a time when the jazz scene was virtually an all-male preserve...her awareness and knowledgeability were something that most younger commentators would be hard put to emulate". In her writing, she continuously keeps jazz history at the forefront, and presents herself as a devout listener, admirer and lover of music. Nevertheless, she admits to having interviewed the brothers Albert Ayler and Donald Ayler as a journalistic exercise and not a fan, yet eventually she "would come to admire Albert Ayler as the last major jazz visionary". Although Wilmer's forte is jazz and blues, she is versed in the larger movements in music history and reveals her versatility across genres when, for instance, she writes about how Jimi Hendrix's visit to England in 1966 gave "the floundering local scene a much-needed injection". Wilmer has contributed to a vast array of publications, including Melody Maker, Down Beat (she was its UK correspondent, 1966–1970), Jazz Journal, Musics, Double Bassist, Mojo, The Wire, and regularly contributes obituaries of musicians to The Guardian. Jazz People (1970) Wilmer's first book, Jazz People, was published by Allison & Busby in 1970 (subsequently issued in the US by Da Capo Press) and is now often referred to as one of the "three or four finest books ever written on jazz". It features interviews with American musicians who include Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Art Farmer, Babs Gonzales, Jimmy Heath, Billy Higgins, Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Clark Terry, Big Joe Turner and Randy Weston, and as Kirkus Reviews noted: "The emphasis is on the people in these fourteen interviews, the personalities behind the jazz, their moods, ambitions, influences....The author observes well and the profiles are short and sharp with high notes for the buff." The Face of Black Music