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Dame Cleo Laine, the U.K.’s most famous and successful jazz performer, died Thursday. She was 97.
Her children said in a statement to The Guardian Friday, “It is with deepest sadness that we announce the passing of our dearly beloved mother, Cleo, who died peacefully yesterday afternoon. We will all miss her terribly. The family wish to be given space to grieve and ask for privacy at this very difficult time.”
Born October 28, 1927, in Southall, Middlesex, England, to a Jamaican WWI veteran and an English farmer’s daughter, she became a teen bride and mother before pursuing a singing career.
In the ’50s, she auditioned for composer, saxophonist, and clarinettist John Dankworth’s band. She got the gig and Dankworth got her — she left her husband and married him, forging a bond for more than 50 years as the U.K.’s premier musical couple.
Laine had one of the most distinctive and versatile voices in recorded history, a four-octave range that helped make her the only woman nominated for Grammys in pop, jazz, and classic categories.
In 1961, she scored a pop crossover Top 10 hit in the U.K. with “You’ll Answer to Me.”
A success in musical theater, she also became a reliable albums artist, receiving special acclaim for a set of Stephen Sondheim songs and a one with Dankworth that set Shakespeare to music.
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In the early ’70s, Laine’s fame went international, with tours abroad and triumphs at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in NYC, the latter of which was recorded, leading to her first and only Grammy win out of five nominations. An appearance on “The Muppet Show” in 1977 charmed TV audiences and further established Laine as an interpreter for the ages.
Over the years, she sang with Ray Charles and Sarah Vaughan, received a Tony nomination for originating the role of Princess Puffer in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1985), and famously supported Frank Sinatra at a series of 1992 Royal Albert Hall gigs in London.
Laine was awarded an OBE in 1979 and became Dame Cleo Laine in 1997.
She and her husband founded the famous venue The Stables in Wavendon, Buckinghamshire, which hosted countless performers, including Amy Winehouse. At its 40th-anniversary celebration in 2010, Laine performed with her children, waiting until the show was over to tell her fans that Dankworth had died earlier that day.
She did not chalk that determination up to “the show must go on,” but rather to her intuition that her late husband would have wanted his family not to disappoint their audience.
Laine was also preceded in death by her son Stuart, who died at 72 in 2019. She is survived by her children Alec and Jacqui Dankworth, both of whom are musicians.
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