English singer and actor Cleo Laine has died, she was 97 years old.
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, was known for her scat style of performing jazz numbers and her long collaboration with her late husband Sir John Dankworth. He passed away in 2010.
The couple began working together in 1951 when Laine was recruited to front the The Johnny Dankworth Seven.
Over the years Dankworth began to work with bigger and bigger ensembles until he was fronting his own big band with Laine as the featured singer. The couple wed in 1958, a year after Laine’s divorce from her first husband was granted.
Lane also found success on the stage as an actor in plays, and in the early 1970s had a long run in the West End starring in the musical Showboat. She also appeared in musicals in the USA including A Little Night Music, The Merry Widow and The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
She recorded over 50 albums during her long career, and many of them charted in Australia in the 1970s. Alongside working with Dankworth she also collaborated with Ray Charles, John Williams, James Galway and Dudley Moore. She also made an appearance on The Muppet Show.
Together Dankworth and Laine set up The Stables arts centre in Buckinghamshire. Today the organsiation said they were “greatly saddened today by the news that one of its founders and Life President, Dame Cleo Laine has passed away”.
David Meadowcroft, chairman of the Stables charity, said: “Dame Cleo was a remarkable performer who was loved by audiences around the world and her commitment to ensuring young people had access to great music and music education will continue through the work of The Stables.”
Chief executive and artistic director Monica Ferguson said: “Dame Cleo was admired greatly by fans, other musicians and by The Stables staff and volunteers.
“She will be greatly missed but her unique talent will always be remembered.”
In 2010 when The Stables celebrated their 40th anniversary Laine sang at a concert to celebrate the achievement, only sharing with the audience at the end of the show that Dankworth had died just a few hours before the show.
Laine was born Clementina Dinah Hitching in 1927, her father Alex Campbell was a Jamaican World War I veteran, and her mother Minnie was a farmer’s daughter from Swindon.
Her parent’s were not married when she born, and she was given her mother’s maiden name on her birth certificate. Her mother was disowned by her family because they didn’t approve of interracial relationships. Laine didn’t discover surname her name was actually Hitching until she went to apply for a passport in her twenties.
As a youngster she was always interested in performing, and made her film debut when she was 12 playing a street urchin in Alexander Korda’s 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad. She left school at 14 after her parent’s divorced, and worked in a series of shops.
She married her first husband George Landridge, a roofer, in 1947, but continued to follow her dreams and head to auditions for singing jobs. When she was hired by the John Dankworth Seven they felt her name Clementina Landridge was too long, so a selection of names were pulled out of a hat creating Cleo Laine.
Queen Elizabeth II awarded her an OBE in 1979 and she was made a dame in 1997. Laine had two children, her son Stuart from her first marriage, and daughter Jacqui from her union with Dankworth. Jacqui Dankworth has also found success as a jazz singer.
