Latest news with #Wavendon
New York Times
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Cleo Laine, Acclaimed British Jazz Singer, Is Dead at 97
Cleo Laine, one of England's most acclaimed jazz singers and an actress who had a memorable Broadway turn as the proprietor of a London opium den in 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' died on Thursday at her home in Wavendon, England. She was 97. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Jacqui Dankworth. Ms. Laine, who was known for a smoky voice that she could deploy over a four-octave range and for her skillful scat singing, recorded numerous albums across six decades. She won a Grammy Award in 1986 for best female jazz vocal performance for 'Cleo at Carnegie: The 10th Anniversary Concert.' She and her husband, the saxophonist and bandleader John Dankworth, performed all over the world and in various settings ranging from intimate nightclubs to the London Palladium. Ms. Laine's interests were wide ranging. She had small roles in a handful of movies, in several of which she was credited simply as 'Singer.' She performed in operas. She worked pop songs into her act. And she was drawn to the theater, especially musical theater. Her performance as Princess Puffer in 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' based on an unfinished Charles Dickens novel and staged as a nightly murder mystery in which the audience votes on the culprit, earned her a Tony nomination in 1986, as well as a number of murder indictments. She didn't mind the criminal record, but she joked in a 1985 interview with The New York Times that one thing about the role gave her pause. 'It certainly can't do my career any harm,' she said, 'unless everybody says from now on, 'Get Cleo Laine for the old hag. She's very good as an old hag.'' Cleo Laine was born Clementine Dinah Campbell on Oct. 28, 1927, in Southall, West London. Her father, Alec Campbell, was a Jamaican who settled in England after fighting in World War I. Her mother, Minnie Hitchings, was an Englishwoman who made sure no one gave her daughter grief over her mixed heritage. 'If anyone insulted us, she would run at them with a broom,' Ms. Laine once told an interviewer. She had a brief early marriage to George Langridge, with whom she had a son, Stuart, but in her 20s she started to think that the singing lessons she had taken as a child might be the underpinning for a career. In 1952 she auditioned to be a vocalist in Mr. Dankworth's band and was hired. They married in 1958. By the mid-1960s she had become one of the most celebrated jazz singers in England. So when she made her formal New York debut at Alice Tully Hall in September 1972 — having previously performed only informally with her husband's band at Birdland in 1959 — the critic John S. Wilson wrote in The Times that the British had been 'hoarding what must be one of their national treasures.' Why did it take so long for the couple to try to conquer the United States? 'We had waited for the Beatle hysteria to die down,' Ms. Laine told The Times in 1975. Subsequent years found her playing New York outlets as varied as the Blue Note and Carnegie Hall. In these and other appearances, reviewers often praised her vocal range and interpretive ability, as well as her adventurous spirit in song selection. But not everyone warmed to her style. 'Her renditions of popular and not-so-popular tunes are models of taste,' Robert Palmer wrote in The Times in a review of 'Cleo on Broadway,' a six-night concert show she performed with Mr. Dankworth's orchestra at the Minskoff Theater in 1977. 'The problem is that one waits in vain for some visceral reaction to her singing, for an emotional punch, or at least a tap.' She toured extensively for many years and recorded album after album. Among the more noteworthy were 'Cleo Sings Sondheim' (1988), which contained a particularly striking version of 'Send In the Clowns,' and 'Woman to Woman' (1989), which consisted entirely of songs written by women, including her own 'Secret Feeling.' Ms. Laine was also an enthusiastic collaborator. She recorded albums with her fellow singers Mel Tormé and Ray Charles and the flutist James Galway, among others. In May 1985 she was among the guests at Symphony Hall in Boston singing with the Boston Pops in a celebration of that orchestra's 100th birthday. She sang 'The Way You Look Tonight' in a duet with Tony Bennett in 2011 at a concert at the London Palladium marking his 85th birthday, and she performed and recorded with her daughter, a jazz singer. She once even sang a ridiculous version of Irving Berlin's 'You're Just in Love' with the 'Muppet Show' character the Swedish Chef. She and Mr. Dankworth also benefited generations of performers through the Stables, a performance space they created on the grounds of their home. Mr. Dankworth died in 2010, hours before a concert to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Stables. The show went on, and so did Ms. Laine. Just before the finale, she told the crowd about his death. In addition to her daughter, Ms. Laine is survived by her son Alec, a bassist; four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Her son Stuart died in 2019. In 1997, Ms. Laine was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, making her Dame Cleo. She continued performing well into her 80s and became known for her remarkable longevity. 'I am still singing and I've got work if I want it,' she said in The Guardian in 2011 at age 83, shortly after breaking her leg in a fall. As for her voice, she said, 'I used to be famous for my four-octave range — I think I've lost one of them.' Ash Wu contributed reporting.
BBC News
5 days ago
- BBC News
Milton Keynes council to consult on safety of road after campaign
A council is to consult on plans to make a village road safer after campaigners described it as an "accident waiting to happen".Dubbed a "classic rat run", Walton Road in the village of Wavendon, Milton Keynes, has a S-bend with "two blind spots" which locals fear is Keynes City Council has been presented with a 230-strong petition calling for safety measures, and is considering options including a one-way system, speed humps - and closure.A spokesperson confirmed the authority would "install a bespoke device to alert motorists if there are pedestrians detected" despite "no incidents being reported to them since records began in 1980". The device is due to be installed next month and the authority said it will consult on options once "they have some weeks of safety data from the device". Trevor and Myra Hutton from the Walton Road Safety Group were among 20 residents who took the petition to a council meeting, but Mr Hutton said they were disappointed with the felt "the council still did not really get it" and that "they have been pushed into pledging to start the consultation".Mrs Hutton said the S-bend had "two blind spots and if you are on them and a car comes whizzing round, you don't stand a chance".She added the road would only be safer if a footpath was councillor David Hopkins said it was a "classic rat run" situation where drivers were seeking alternatives to the city's grid road said a lot of incidents on the road were "scrapes and bumps" but did not want "to see a child or adult lose their life to prompt the council into doing something". Wavendon is a village on the south-east edge of Milton Keynes that was featured in the Domesday is home to just a couple of hundred people, but is only two miles away from the Glebe Meadows development of almost 3,000 homes, and one of the largest distribution parks in the UK at Magna Park, where Amazon, John Lewis and Waitrose have to the Walton Road Residents Road Safety Group, between five and seven cars per minute drove through the S-bend on the morning school run, equating to more than 400 cars per council records suggest road safety has been a concern there for more than 30 years and the bend itself was considered so challenging that it was used by John Lewis for its driver training programme. Nadege Pierron told the BBC she had to wheel her pram up on to people's driveways to avoid cars on the said it was "scary for my daughter to walk as I always have to grab her" and added that her "eldest daughter uses the road to go walk to school and has nearly been crushed between two vans".Cliff Riley has lived on the road for four years and described the increase in traffic as "significant".He said when he tries to pull out onto the road he "personally gets abuse on a weekly basis from people flying around the corner".Amy Bicknell added she had "been nearly run over on the bend a few times because cars come flying around bend all the time".She wanted the road closed and said it could happen "if enough people say yes, because there are other routes around here" they could use instead. Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
