Dame Cleo Laine was a British singer known as the "First Lady of Jazz". She had a four-octave vocal range stretching from husky contralto depths to top notes that operatic sopranos would have struggled to reach. She died on July 24th 2025, aged 97.
Laine grew up in Southall, in London's western suburbs. Her father, Alexander Campbell, was a Jamaican veteran of the first world war. Her mother, Minnie Bullock, was a farmer's daughter from Wiltshire. She left school early.
In 1951 she auditioned for a singer's job with the Johnny Dankworth Seven, a jazz ensemble, singing "Embraceable You" and "It's Only a Paper Moon". John Dankworth offered her £6 a week; she held out for £7 and got it. She married Dankworth in 1958.
Her repertoire spanned avant-garde theatre, Broadway musicals, jazz classics, pop tunes and the songs Dankworth composed for her. She took dramatic roles at the Royal Court Theatre and in 1961 sang in Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's "The Seven Deadly Sins". Lotte Lenya, Weill's widow and the role's originator, jealously refused to let her record it.
Her album "Shakespeare and All That Jazz" (1964) matched Dankworth's verse settings to her agile delivery. She performed Arnold Schoenberg's demanding song-cycle "Pierrot Lunaire" and took a lead in a hit production of Jerome Kern's "Show Boat". In 1973 she conquered Carnegie Hall with a solo show; a decade later another performance there won her a Grammy award. A critic at the New York Times wrote that the Brits had been hoarding "one of their national treasures".
Musical partnerships followed with Ray Charles, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Stephen Sondheim's songs fitted her mature voice particularly well.
She had two children with Dankworth: Jacqui Dankworth, a singer, and Alec Dankworth, a bassist. The couple built a theatre and arts centre, The Stables, at their home in Buckinghamshire. She became Dame Cleo in 1997. Dankworth died in 2010; she announced his death only after that evening's performance at The Stables.
An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on