by Cleo Laine, who died at the age of 97, was not only the creative and materially successful jazz singer who knew the British scene, but was also respected worldwide as a handful of really original singer in jazz. From modest beginnings in the pubs and dance halls of austerity measures in Great Britain in the 1950s, the tiny singer with the majestic and agile voice achieved international fame in a career that also included acting and writing.
Laine was able to easily travel in almost every idiom, from jazzy standard sessions to the limits of classical music and opera, and she was the only singer who received grammy nominations in the categories jazz, popular and classical. When she became the first British artist who won a Grammy in 1985 as the best jazz singer (for the third of her live carnegie -hall -alben), she received two dozen roses from Ella Fitzgerald and one card: “Congratulations, gal -it’s time!”
Even late in her career, Laine’s remarkable assortment, theater awareness for contrast and drama, sensitivity to the melody and mood as well as the clever selection of high -class songs, prevented them from sounding remote. Regardless of whether she was never less than the classic actions with her husband John Daankworth, the Altaxophonist, in cool counter -sockets, in flat exercises in zigzaging scat or pounding swing or in spatial moods of the moving reflection.
In 1997 they and thank you received a celebrity concert by Royal Albert Hall in honor of their 70th birthdays together. As long-term stars of a usually low-profile British jazz scene, they brought together the worlds of the arts and unruly jazz. They helped bring the British jazz to the map, to encourage music training, to smuggle jazz into the sensitivity of listeners who thought they loathed, and added a splash of style and self -confidence in general.
Laine’s glamor on stage would give way to a much secular and down -to -earth magnetism as soon as the spotlight was switched off. As an open and likeable woman, she impressed those who met her with her relaxed vigilance, unexpectedly small stature for those who had previously only met a concert stage and had penetrated green eyes that were framed by dark curls.
She was also in the age of the omnipresent psychotherapist mocked about her ease of the mind and simply said: “I am not a very neurotic person.” This realism made it possible for her to take into account both her talents and her defects with neither self -meaning nor guilt. She would occasionally ponder Whether Two Parents Spending a Lifetime on the Road was not textbook Childcare by some standards, but pointeded out the independence and self-reliance of her Children with thanksworth-the-iir son, alec, Became a Successful double-bassist and band leader, and and Daughter, Jacqui, A Vocalist, Actor and Songwriter with Much of HER MOTHER’s Canny Timing, Emotional Subbtlety, and Inclusiveness of Taste.
Laine was born in Southall, West London, one of three children of a Jamaican father, Alexander Campbell, and an English mother, Minnie Bullock, who took Lodgers. Growing up as Clementina Campbell (the fact that her birth had been registered under the name of her mother before her parents got married, she first appeared by a passport by 26. At that time she appeared as a cleo Laine).
After leaving school at the age of 14, she found work in a hairdresser, Milliner, Pawnshop, cobbler and library, and married George Langridge for the first time in 1947 while she was still in her teenagers. But she was restless and the example of her father, who loved sang and music, but sold his livelihood from door to door, had also given her an idea that a life in music could give an escape.
She modeled herself on the black singers, which she heard in American musicals like cabin in the sky, and unintentionally developed a sound that is strikingly different from that of the most popular singers of the 40s and early 1950s. The choice of black artists seemed to be obvious, and the threatening effects of racial minority in Great Britain were not as obvious as later in the 1950s. However, Laine remembered that as a child during the Second World War, she had speculated where children like them could hide when National Socialism won.
In the mid -1920s, Laine began to apply seriously on singing. She had started in Pubs (“Useful training for improvisation”, which she would remember) and finally spoke for the successful British modern jazz band under the direction of Dankworth. Although she was a raw unknown, thank you and his musicians recognized her promise.
“I was amazed that they liked me,” said Laine in 1997 to The Guardian. But Dankworth was behind someone, and Laine was unusual as a rich alcohol. She heard Billie Holiday closely for her presence and her feeling of the drama, Fitzgerald for the thinking processes and the technology that made it possible for her to improvise so exhaustively, and Sarah Vaughan for her opera area. The mature Laine should issue all of these properties.
In the mid-1950s, she toured the Dankworth band in the Great Britain in detail. She had Langridge married in 1957 and the following year. She accompanied Dankworth in 1959 to the USA to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival and sang with the band in Birdland in New York on the same journey. She also started reading and developed an enthusiasm for poetry – especially that of EE Cummings, the pieces of which she should absorb as a song.
She also started to act and was initially limited to the Caribbean roles, but her skills bloomed, and she was supposed to consider her appearances at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1960s and in a midsummer Night’s Dream, 1967. But there were many others: meat to a tiger that in 1958 by the Royal Court Theater, the English Musical Valmouth, the title role in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, as well as musical appearances in show boat, Colette, The Seven Deadly Sins, a little night music and The Merry Witwe.
It also emerged the role of Princess Puffer (and received several awards and nominations for it) in Broadway -Hit -Musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood 1985.
In the 1960s, in show and soundtrack projects, she took in the 60s (Dankworth was a sought-after film composer at the time) and straight jazz albums with guests such as the British Saxophon Virtuoso Tubby Hayes and her singer-time-genisian Annie Ross and in this decade.
Thanks to now, Dankworth had started to explore jazz variations of the non-Jazz traditions in his own music, and broke through Shakespeare sonettes through-Shakespeare and all that jazz (1964), who won a widespread recognition and a five-star award in the US magazine. Laine eagerly increased her – on slow pieces like O Mistress Mine and I should compare you with a summer day, she showed a remarkable ability to ring the calm sounds like tiny bells and then be enveloped into a low grades of resonant.
Classic audience also started to wake up Laine’s skillful control, rich tones and spontaneous jazz sensitivity. She was Julie in the Spectacularly Successful 1971 London Production of Jerome’s Show Boat, Made to Acclaimed New York Debut in 1972 And The First of Her Carnegie Hall Appearances (Her Live At Carnegie Hall Album from 1974 Brought Her A First Grammy Nomination), and Further Expanded Her Palette in Recording Arnold Schoenberg’s Poetry-Cycle Pierrot Lunaire, which was nominated for a classical grammy. Despite an increasingly frenetic working life, she and Dankworth also monitor the development of her home house in Buckinghamshire in Wavendon as a work theater.
Over the next few decades, Laine has been working with the weak artist James Galway (1980) and the classic guitarist John Williams (1984), who contributed to Michael Tilson Thomas’ lso series The Gershwin Years (1987) and a tribute to female songwriter, including Joni Mitchell and Holidays (Frau, 1989). Her bluesimy soulful encounter with Ray Charles (Porgy and Bess, 1976) was a highlight, as was a hip and swinging meeting with Mel Tormé (nothing without her, 1992). Laine also performed in 1992 in a week of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall together with Frank Sinatra.
According to your autobiography Cleo (1994), Laine also published you can sing if you want (1997) – an informal guide to learning to use the voice freely and safely as an instrument.
The thanksgfore were only slightly slowed down in the 1970s -their concerts worldwide were still sold out -and when Laine was 80 years old (thank you 80th after she had taken one month before her), she played a series of UK shows, including a reunion of John Dankworth Sextet, which had set her order in motion. A four-disc box set, I Hear Music, was documented from 1944 to 2005 the couple’s work.
Dankworth’s health went on a US tour at the end of 2009 that had to be restricted. He died on the morning of February 10, 2010. He and Laine and a dazzling line -up of guests had played in Wavendon that evening to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Stable Theater. Laine was driven by the conviction that Daankworth had wanted the celebration, went home from the hospital, played the appearance and only broke the news of his death to an stunned audience at the end.
She continued to appear for a few years, often with a thank -worth rhythm with Alec on the bass and the pianist John Horler, which demonstrated to Cheltenham Jazz Festival in 2011 that Laine was still a classic jazz song like Duke Ellington Creole Love Call with a freshness that is not far away from Adelaide 1920s version of the original -Ranges from Adelaide Halls could deliver.
Laine and Dankworth have predicted contemporary developments that have led to the audience from the European art music tradition, western pop or cultures or cultures. Laine would easily agree that the Grand Opera is “wonderful … but also Louis Armstrong, also wonderful and operational in his own way”.
For her musicality and for this width from perspective, she received a number of awards and prices and was made a lady in 1997. Her achievements were a rich mix of the creative journey and the crusade, characteristics of a musical life that she and Dankworth led with the easiest touches. Despite all the globeting, jet lag and the impossible schedules, they seemed more fun than working.
Stuart died 2019. Laine is survived by Alec and Jacqui.
• Cleo Laine (Clementine Dinah Bullock), singer and actress, born on October 27, 1927; died on July 24, 2025
