Margaret Wright

February 21, 1942 - December 6, 2020

Pianist and vocalist Margaret Wright, a joyous entertainer whose long career represented the enduring legacy of an East Austin she witnessed being erased, died unexpectedly December 6, 2020, at the age of 78.

Born on the Eastside at Austin’s Holy Cross hospital in 1942, Wright grew up in a musical family with a mother who played in church and a multi-instrumentalist sister. She attended L.C. Anderson High School and had already begun playing live by the time she enrolled at Huston-Tillotson University, where she graduated in 1964. She became an educator and eventually taught music at the Texas Preparatory School until a few years ago when she retired.

Possessing a superbly chromatic and agile style of piano playing, Wright became a fixture at the intimate Skylark Lounge on Airport, performing there several times a week since 2013. Decades of local gigs saw her hold down extended residencies at the Driskill, Cedar Street, Ego’s, and the Elephant Room. She also made appearances everywhere from the historic Paramount Theatre to punk club Hotel Vegas.

All walks of life accounted for her fanbase.

Wright rarely – if ever – employed a setlist. She maintained an extraordinary mental repertoire of material: largely standards form the American songbook, plus blues, jazz, and gospel numbers she pulled from spontaneously or by request. 

Her soul sang from any bandstand.

Live music capitalists voted the septuagenarian into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2015 and she appeared at the Austin Music Awards to receive that honor.

Wright maintained notorious disinterest in conducting interviews or placing attention on herself aside from the communication between her voice and hands, and the audience. Her only child, Joely, explained in 2015 her joy came from being an entertainer, a pianist.  The limelight was not important to her.  

Margaret Wright, who’s survived by her husband Joe and Joely, represented a continuity to East Austin that’s increasingly difficult to trace, about which she remained outspoken in Spearman’s feature:

“I don’t like what they did to [East Austin], and I think it was mean in nature,” she stated. “I think it was spiteful, hateful, [and] disgusting. Why do you take stuff from people? Don’t move them, build on what’s there.”

“They may have something to offer, so don’t run them out, because you may have to go get ’em.”

Margaret’s last performance occurred in the second week of March 2020 at the Skylark before live music shut down with the approaching pandemic.