Singer Cleo Laine, Britain's greatest jazz voice, dies at 97
The Stables, a charity and venue Laine founded with her late jazz musician husband John Dankworth, said it was "greatly saddened" by the news that "one of its founders and Life President, Dame Cleo Laine has passed away".
Monica Ferguson, artistic director of The Stables, said Laine "will be greatly missed, but her unique talent will always be remembered".
Laine's career spanned the Atlantic and crossed genres. She sang the songs of Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg and Robert Schumann; she acted on stage and on film and even played God in a production of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde.
Laine's life and art were intimately bound up with band leader Dankworth, who gave her a job and her stage name in 1951, and married her seven years later. Both were still performing after their 80th birthdays. Dankworth died in 2010 at 82.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 1997, Laine became the first British jazz artist to be made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight.
"It is British jazz that should have received the accolade for its service to me," she said when the honour was announced. "It has given me a wonderful life, a successful career and an opportunity to travel the globe doing what I love to do."
Laine was born Clementina Dinah Campbell in 1927. Her father, Alexander Campbell, was a Jamaican who loved opera and earned money during the Depression as a street singer. Despite hard times, her British mother, Minnie, made sure that her daughter had piano, voice and dance lessons.
She began performing at local events at age 3, and at age 12, she got a role as a movie extra in The Thief of Bagdad. Leaving school at 14, Laine went to work as a hairdresser and faced repeated rejection in her efforts to get a job as a singer.
A decade later, in 1951, she tried out for the Johnny Dankworth Seven, and succeeded. "Clementina Campbell" was judged too long for a marquee, so she became Cleo Laine.
"John said that when he heard me, I didn't sound like anyone else who was singing at the time," Laine once said. "I guess the reason I didn't get the other jobs is that they were looking for a singer who did sound like somebody else."
Laine had a remarkable range, from tenor to contralto, and a sound often described as "smoky".
ADVERTISEMENT
Dankworth, in an interview with the Irish Independent, recalled Laine's audition.
"They were all sitting there with stony faces, so I asked the Scottish trumpet player Jimmy Deuchar, who was looking very glum and was the hardest nut of all, whether he thought she had something. 'Something?' he said, 'She's got everything!'"
Offered 6 pounds a week, Laine demanded — and got — 7 pounds.
"They used to call me 'Scruff', although I don't think I was scruffy. It was just that having come from the sticks, I didn't know how to put things together as well as the other singers of the day," she told the Irish Independent. "And anyway, I didn't have the money, because they weren't paying me enough."
Recognition came swiftly. Laine was runner-up in Melody Maker's "girl singer" category in 1952, and topped the list in 1956 and 1957.
She married Dankworth — and quit his band — in 1958, a year after her divorce from her first husband, George Langridge. As Dankworth's band prospered, Laine began to feel underused.
"I thought, no, I'm not going to just sit on the band and be a singer of songs every now and again when he fancied it. So it was then that I decided I wasn't going to stay with the band and I was going to go off and try to do something solo-wise," she said in a BBC documentary.
ADVERTISEMENT
"When I said I was leaving, he said, 'Will you marry me?' That was a good ploy, wasn't it, huh?"
They were married on March 18, 1958. A son, Alec, was born in 1960, and daughter Jacqueline followed in 1963.
Despite her happy marriage, Laine forged a career independent of Dankworth.
"Whenever anybody starts putting a label on me, I say, 'Oh, no you don't,' and I go and do something different," Laine told The Associated Press in 1985 when she was appearing on stage in New York in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."
Her stage career began in 1958 when she was invited to join the cast of a West Indian play, Flesh to a Tiger, at the Royal Court Theatre, and was surprised to find herself in the lead role. She won a Moscow Arts Theatre Award for her performance.
Valmouth followed in 1959, The Seven Deadly Sins in 1961, The Trojan Women in 1966 and Hedda Gabler in 1970.
The role of Julie in Jerome Kern's Show Boat in 1971 provided Laine with a show-stopping song, Bill.
ADVERTISEMENT
Laine began winning a following in the United States in 1972 with a concert at the Alice Tully Hall in New York. It wasn't well-attended, but The New York Times gave her a glowing review.
The following year, she and Dankworth drew a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall, launching a series of popular appearances. Cleo at Carnegie won a Grammy award in 1986, the same year she was a Tony nominee for The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
A reviewer for Variety in 2002 found her voice going strong: "a dark, creamy voice, remarkable range and control from bottomless contralto to a sweet clear soprano. Her perfect pitch and phrasing is always framed with musical imagination and good taste."
Perhaps Laine's most difficult performance of all was on February 6, 2010, at a concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of the concert venue she and Dankworth had founded at their home, during which Laine and both of her children performed.
"I'm terribly sorry that Sir John can't be here today," Laine told the crowd at the end of the show. 'But earlier on my husband died in hospital.'
Laine said in an interview with the Boston Globe in 2003 that the secret of her longevity was that "I was never a complete belter".
"There was always a protective side in me, and an inner voice always said, 'Don't do that — it's not good for you and your voice.'"
ADVERTISEMENT
Laine is survived by her son and daughter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
40 minutes ago
- Otago Daily Times
Cathies come home to dance in Octagon
Jonny Goldsmith usually spends his Saturday mornings with his head under a car bonnet, covered in grease, trying to get his beloved "old dunger" restoration project up and running again. Jonny Goldsmith dresses up for charity at the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, in Dunedin's Octagon on Saturday. PHOTOS: PETER MCINTOSH But the 46-year-old Port Chalmers man decided to do something quite different to that at the weekend, donning a red dress to celebrate the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, in Dunedin's Octagon instead. He was one of about 70 people at the event, which was founded by British group Shambush, and invites participants to re-create the music video for musician Kate Bush's 1978 song Wuthering Heights as a way to raise funds. The event is held globally every year, as close to Kate Bush's birthday (on July 30) as possible, and Dunedin is always the first city in the world to do it. "I'm a huge fan of Kate Bush, obviously, and my daughters did it one year and told me I should come along and watch." The next thing he knew, he was being slipped into a red dress and encouraged to dance. "It was a lot of fun, so I'm doing it again this year," he said. "It's a good chance to be doing something with my daughters, and it's a great way to support a local charity." About 70 people of all ages and genders participated in the Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, in Dunedin's Octagon on Saturday. Dunedin city councillor and event organiser Mandy Mayhem said the annual event raised funds for Wellness, Empathy and Kindness Aotearoa (Weka), which provides support and positive change in physical, family, spiritual and mental wellbeing, through passion, knowledge and the use of simple and effective strategies. The organisation was established in response to people not being able to access mental health services at the level that they needed. The support includes group education sessions, one-to-one work, wellness recovery action plans, early warning sign triggers, information on anxiety and depression.
NZ Herald
19 hours ago
- NZ Herald
40 years after Live Aid, it's still personal for Bob Geldof
Geldof persuaded many of the world's top artists at the time to play for free, including Queen, David Bowie, Madonna, the Who, Elton John, Tina Turner and Paul McCartney. The shows were seen by about 1.5 billion people in more than 150 countries and would go on to raise more than US$140 million ($235m). Stars including George Michael, left; Paul McCartney, fourth from left; and Freddie Mercury, second from right, during the Live Aid Concert at Wembley Stadium in London on July 13, 1985. Photo / Getty Images The concerts followed the success of the Band Aid charity single, Do They Know It's Christmas?, which Geldof had co-written with singer Midge Ure and released the previous year. The song featured a who's who of British music, and raised £8m ($18m). It also inspired Harry Belafonte to organise an American equivalent, We Are the World, which remains one of the bestselling singles in history. Live Aid transformed Geldof into one of the world's best-known and most successful activists. The Band Aid Charitable Trust, a foundation he co-created, is still funding international development projects to alleviate poverty and hunger in Africa. These include supporting maternal health care facilities in Ethiopia and a programme to provide meals for children. To mark the Live Aid anniversary, the BBC and CNN co-produced a documentary series, Live Aid: When Rock 'n' Roll Took On the World. It also covers Band Aid and Live 8, concerts that Geldof organised in 2005 that helped pressure the world's richest countries to cut the debt owed by the poorest countries and increase aid spending. A medical and food distribution centre in Ethiopia in November 1984 during what the BBC called a 'biblical famine.' Photo / Finn Frandsen / Polphoto / AFP Geldof, 73, is currently on tour for another anniversary – celebrating 50 years since the founding of the Boomtown Rats – and spoke in a video interview from Novi Sad, Serbia, where the band performed last week. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Q: Tell me about that day in 1984 when you saw the BBC report. 'I was anxious at the time. I don't think my band had made a great record, and we weren't getting in the charts. A measure of how well we were not doing was I was home at 6 o'clock: Pop singers should not be doing 9 to 5. 'But everyone in Britain came home and watched the 6 o'clock news. The BBC gave this story about famine in Africa about eight minutes – the reporter went to the epicentre of the famine in Korem, Ethiopia, and sent this devastating piece of journalism. The objective truth and the subjective rage of what he was telling us about was evident, and certainly struck me. 'We were riveted by the prurience and the horror of it. This other world was suddenly thrown at us. I very much remember those images, and if you force me to articulate them again, I start crying again. Those images are the things that my mind will not allow me to obliterate.' Q: Yet you revert to those images when you want people to understand the horror of what motivated you in the first place. A: I suppose it's been the animus through the years. I can lobby and write policy, but when push comes to shove, it's only the end object that animates me to act. It can come to a head in a personal way. In Montreal last November, I was staying at a posh hotel. My wife ordered breakfast. The guy arrived and asked if he could say hello to her husband. He came into the room in an ill-fitting suit, pushing the trolley. He was a small guy and obviously Ethiopian. Geldof and the singer Midge Ure in London in 1984. They wrote the single Do They Know It's Christmas? together. Photo / Getty Images He said, 'Can I shake your hand?' He then stood bolt upright – he had prepared this – and made a speech at me. He didn't know who his parents were, he had been in Korem, and said he was raised on Band Aid food in a Band Aid orphanage, and he got to Paris to study catering and he was now here. I asked if he had a family and he said yeah, he had met an Ethiopian girl and he showed me a picture of her and his two cute kids, 8 and 9. Then he suddenly rushed at me and hugged me, and laid his head on my chest and said, 'Thank you for my sons, thank you for my life.' Obviously, Live Aid and Band Aid were the work of thousands of people. But you know, it worked. Q: But there is a difference between being enraged and actually doing something. A: What I've learned is that it is no use walking around singing, We Shall Overcome. Because you won't. Singing the song isn't enough. Protest songs are only ever protest songs. Music can be a call to arms, but music itself changes nothing. It won't go further unless you are determined to act upon it. The bands at Live Aid were the Pied Pipers, and the audience gathered around the electronic hearth of television and radio. The symbolism of it all carried through to 20 years of lobbying to change policy. 'Singing the song isn't enough,' Geldof said. 'It won't go further unless you are determined to act upon it.' Photo / Chris Hoare, The New York Times Q: You saw music as a platform to do things. Could Live Aid happen today? A: I don't think it's possible now. Society has changed. The web is an isolating technology. It knows what you are, it drives you, it gives you what it thinks you want, and as you get jaded it gives you more extreme versions of that. Now, music is free and you get the news that you want to see. The web is an echo chamber of your own prejudices, so you only hear the music that it thinks you like. It's a silo of the self. So I don't think music can survive being the spine of the culture as it was. Q: Bohemian Rhapsody, the 2018 film about singer Freddie Mercury, suggests that Queen's Live Aid performance was the moment when the donations started flowing in. A: The movie isn't right. Queen were completely, utterly brilliant. But the telephone lines collapsed after David Bowie performed. I was given the outtakes of a report that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation couldn't show, because it was just so appalling, the visual images. The editor had cut the film in Addis Ababa to the tune of Drive, the Cars song, and it's worse than the BBC report. Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter, and I had gone to see David about what songs he would sing. But before we started talking about the songs, I said, 'Look at this thing,' and I put it on. David Bowie during the Live Aid concert at Wembley in 1985. Donations started flowing in after his performance. Photo / Getty Images David was crying and said he would cut a song from his set to show the CBC report instead. It's an extraordinary moment during the concert, because at the end of Heroes, which the crowd were all singing, he quietly introduces the clip and asks people to send their money in. It was like a slap in the face. Bowie brought the house down. That was the key moment. Q: How do you respond to criticism that you and Live Aid are examples of a 'white saviour' complex? You have said it simply isn't relevant when you are dealing with an emergency or disaster. A: There is nothing to argue. It's nonsense, like any dogma. It's like Catholicism that says you are born with original sin. Or Freudianism. It's theory and notional. It's not even worth entertaining. It doesn't exist. Q: You have always been pragmatic with your activism, and you've dealt with politicians of all stripes. How do you feel about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and their decision to gut USAID, which worked in many of the areas and causes that you have fought for? 'We're in a radically different world now. It's the argument between nationalism and internationalism. 'What is profoundly shocking is the cackling glee with which the Trump-Vance-Musk triumvirate went about declaring war on the weakest and most vulnerable people of our planet. America was always the most generous by far of all the countries. 'Why would great America do that, while the richest man on the planet cackles that we're going to feed USAID into the wood chipper? It is grotesque, it is a disgrace to the country.' Musk said that the great weakness of Western civilisation is empathy. You fool. Empathy is the glue of humanity. It is the basis of civilisation. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Ravi Mattu Photographs by: Chris Hoare ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
1News
a day ago
- 1News
Singer Cleo Laine, Britain's greatest jazz voice, dies at 97
Cleo Laine, whose husky contralto was one of the most distinctive voices in jazz and who was regarded by many as Britain's greatest contribution to the quintessentially American music, has died. She was 97. The Stables, a charity and venue Laine founded with her late jazz musician husband John Dankworth, said it was "greatly saddened" by the news that "one of its founders and Life President, Dame Cleo Laine has passed away". Monica Ferguson, artistic director of The Stables, said Laine "will be greatly missed, but her unique talent will always be remembered". Laine's career spanned the Atlantic and crossed genres. She sang the songs of Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg and Robert Schumann; she acted on stage and on film and even played God in a production of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde. Laine's life and art were intimately bound up with band leader Dankworth, who gave her a job and her stage name in 1951, and married her seven years later. Both were still performing after their 80th birthdays. Dankworth died in 2010 at 82. ADVERTISEMENT In 1997, Laine became the first British jazz artist to be made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight. "It is British jazz that should have received the accolade for its service to me," she said when the honour was announced. "It has given me a wonderful life, a successful career and an opportunity to travel the globe doing what I love to do." Laine was born Clementina Dinah Campbell in 1927. Her father, Alexander Campbell, was a Jamaican who loved opera and earned money during the Depression as a street singer. Despite hard times, her British mother, Minnie, made sure that her daughter had piano, voice and dance lessons. She began performing at local events at age 3, and at age 12, she got a role as a movie extra in The Thief of Bagdad. Leaving school at 14, Laine went to work as a hairdresser and faced repeated rejection in her efforts to get a job as a singer. A decade later, in 1951, she tried out for the Johnny Dankworth Seven, and succeeded. "Clementina Campbell" was judged too long for a marquee, so she became Cleo Laine. "John said that when he heard me, I didn't sound like anyone else who was singing at the time," Laine once said. "I guess the reason I didn't get the other jobs is that they were looking for a singer who did sound like somebody else." Laine had a remarkable range, from tenor to contralto, and a sound often described as "smoky". ADVERTISEMENT Dankworth, in an interview with the Irish Independent, recalled Laine's audition. "They were all sitting there with stony faces, so I asked the Scottish trumpet player Jimmy Deuchar, who was looking very glum and was the hardest nut of all, whether he thought she had something. 'Something?' he said, 'She's got everything!'" Offered 6 pounds a week, Laine demanded — and got — 7 pounds. "They used to call me 'Scruff', although I don't think I was scruffy. It was just that having come from the sticks, I didn't know how to put things together as well as the other singers of the day," she told the Irish Independent. "And anyway, I didn't have the money, because they weren't paying me enough." Recognition came swiftly. Laine was runner-up in Melody Maker's "girl singer" category in 1952, and topped the list in 1956 and 1957. She married Dankworth — and quit his band — in 1958, a year after her divorce from her first husband, George Langridge. As Dankworth's band prospered, Laine began to feel underused. "I thought, no, I'm not going to just sit on the band and be a singer of songs every now and again when he fancied it. So it was then that I decided I wasn't going to stay with the band and I was going to go off and try to do something solo-wise," she said in a BBC documentary. ADVERTISEMENT "When I said I was leaving, he said, 'Will you marry me?' That was a good ploy, wasn't it, huh?" They were married on March 18, 1958. A son, Alec, was born in 1960, and daughter Jacqueline followed in 1963. Despite her happy marriage, Laine forged a career independent of Dankworth. "Whenever anybody starts putting a label on me, I say, 'Oh, no you don't,' and I go and do something different," Laine told The Associated Press in 1985 when she was appearing on stage in New York in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Her stage career began in 1958 when she was invited to join the cast of a West Indian play, Flesh to a Tiger, at the Royal Court Theatre, and was surprised to find herself in the lead role. She won a Moscow Arts Theatre Award for her performance. Valmouth followed in 1959, The Seven Deadly Sins in 1961, The Trojan Women in 1966 and Hedda Gabler in 1970. The role of Julie in Jerome Kern's Show Boat in 1971 provided Laine with a show-stopping song, Bill. ADVERTISEMENT Laine began winning a following in the United States in 1972 with a concert at the Alice Tully Hall in New York. It wasn't well-attended, but The New York Times gave her a glowing review. The following year, she and Dankworth drew a sold-out audience at Carnegie Hall, launching a series of popular appearances. Cleo at Carnegie won a Grammy award in 1986, the same year she was a Tony nominee for The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A reviewer for Variety in 2002 found her voice going strong: "a dark, creamy voice, remarkable range and control from bottomless contralto to a sweet clear soprano. Her perfect pitch and phrasing is always framed with musical imagination and good taste." Perhaps Laine's most difficult performance of all was on February 6, 2010, at a concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of the concert venue she and Dankworth had founded at their home, during which Laine and both of her children performed. "I'm terribly sorry that Sir John can't be here today," Laine told the crowd at the end of the show. 'But earlier on my husband died in hospital.' Laine said in an interview with the Boston Globe in 2003 that the secret of her longevity was that "I was never a complete belter". "There was always a protective side in me, and an inner voice always said, 'Don't do that — it's not good for you and your voice.'" ADVERTISEMENT Laine is survived by her son and daughter.
