Obituary
Jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine, famous for her huge vocal range and wide musical repertoire, has died at the age of 97.
Dame Cleo Laine, 97
by 14 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Musings on the byways of popular culture
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce78ddyjl76o
Flags around the Stables will be flying at half-mast tonight.
“I guess he married me because he wanted a cheap singer,” she quipped. “But what he got was an expensive wife.”
What a great quote that is
Very popular down here. As a teenager I had a bit of a crush on her. Think Dad did too which was…err …odd.
I sat behind her at the Stables about 10 years ago. She still had ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ was.
I saw her once, sharing the stage with Mel Torme at the Barbican. Terrific show, and I’ve always remembered it as one of the best I saw with my dad.
Good obit in The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/25/dame-cleo-laine-obituary
I haven’t thought about Cleo for years, but she was a class act.
I saw her (and Johnny) at an antique fair held at The Stables in Wavendon in the mid 80’s, they were very friendly and I noticed Cleo had LOADS of make-up on, that’s my only anecdote.
As a young lad I thought “She sings like an angel, is groovy and, whatever this means, she is really hot”.
As an old man, I think I was most probably Right
Had some dealings with her in the late 90s over the book she wrote on singing, and got to go to a gig in London and visit her and JD in Wavendon. Lovely lady, great fun, and a voice like the proverbial angel, both singing and speaking.
A marvellous singer and actress. Classy.
A sad day, but 97 is a bloody good innings.
(Not my copyright, someone else’s)
Great to hear that she was as equally charming off stage, @mikethep.
What an extraordinary career she had as both a singer and an actress.
I just stumbled across the interesting piece about her life which starts off from her West Indian roots.
https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-13/caribbean-cleo-amazing-cleo-laine
Much as I loathe her much caricatured scat singing image, and the reality when she did, I attended a celebration of big band jazz at the Southbank a couple of decades ago, and she came on, I think, for the encore. Very much the grande dame, but she nailed it. Utterly fabulous. It wasn’t much after Johnny had died, either.
There are/were a lot of jazz vocalists singing scat and almost none have made a good job of it, IMO.
Ella and Cleo were two who I could actually enjoy singing scat.
A few others were tolerable if they didn’t do it too often, or for too long.
I heard a version of this on Radio 3 this morning, Cleo and solo clarinet.
Lovely.