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Irish Independent

Obituary: Cleo Laine, Grammy-winning jazz singer with a striking stage presence

Vocalist formed an enduring partnership with her husband John Dankworth Cleo Laine, the singer and actor who has died aged 97, was not only the best jazz vocalist that Britain ever produced, but was also one of the most versatile and enduring musicians from any part of the world. With a voice that could soar easily from a throaty C below middle C through a honeyed contralto to high-pitched trills on top A, Laine sang from the mid-1950s until well into the 21st century, ­becoming the only performer to receive Grammy nominations in the female jazz, popular and classical­ categories. She also won jazz lifetime achievement prizes, cut gold and platinum hits (Feel The Warm, Sometimes When We Touch) and, over the decades, appeared in theatre and on numerous television shows. Her marriage to John Dankworth, the jazz clarinettist, saxophonist, arranger and band leader, was one of the most enduring and successful partnerships in music history. A Cleo Laine song was usually a Dankworth setting, daring and enlivened by ­delightfully unexpected touches. Quite early in their partnership, Dankworth began devising unison passages for saxophone and wordless scat-singing which exploited the wild gypsy streak in Laine. These became a hallmark of many of her most memorable performances. With astonishing green eyes, high cheekbones and a mop of frizzy auburn hair, Laine was always professional, with a striking stage presence and an actor's timing and sensitivity to the meaning of words. Yet perhaps the most remarkable thing about her was that she was largely self-taught. She was born Clementine Dinah Campbell in Southall, which was then in Middlesex, on October 28, 1927, one of three children. After Laine was born, her parents went through a wedding ceremony despite the fact that her mother was already married. Together they ran a cafe and then a boarding house for Irish labourers. At the age of three she began ­performing at parties, working-men's clubs and Salvation Army meetings. At school she began to harbour hopes of a showbusiness career, inspired by the black singers she saw in musicals such as Cabin in the Sky and by her brother Alexander's collection of jazz records. Aged 12, she played one of a crowd of street urchins in Alexander Korda's Thief of Bagdad (1940). She left school at 14 and worked variously as a hairdresser's apprentice, a milliner, a cobbler and as assistant to a pawnbroker. At the same time she auditioned for singing jobs, but without success. At 18 she married George Langridge, a local builder with whom she had a son. ADVERTISEMENT Eventually, she was offered 32 ­shillings to do a one-night stand at the local Labour Party's New Year's Eve party. The bass player there suggested that she should audition for the Johnny Dankworth Seven, one of the country's leading jazz groups, who were looking for a female did not take much notice of her until she opened her mouth to sing; she chose Embraceable You and Paper Moon. It was the band that decided, by drawing suggestions out of a hat, that she should change her name to Cleo Laine. The next year she polled second in Melody Maker's Girl Singer of the Year category. She won the poll in 1956 and 1957. Cleo fell madly in love with Dankworth and left her husband and son to live alone in a flat in Kilburn High Road. They eventually married in 1958. She made her West End debut as a masseuse in Sandy Wilson's musical adaptation of the Ronald Fairbank novel Valmouth (Saville, 1959). She had her first film role as a singer in Tennessee Williams's The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961). Dankworth was knighted in 2006 and died in 2010. She is survived by the son of her first marriage, and by their daughter, Jacqui, a singer, and son, Alec, a bassist who played with Dave Brubeck and with his father's band. Another son, Stuart, died in 2019.