Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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LAINE, Cleo

(b Clementina Dinah Campbell, 28 October 1927, Southall, Middlesex) UK singer; also actress. Her father came to England with the West Indian Expeditionary Force during WWI, and married an English girl. She was an extra in the film Thief Of Bagdad '40 (which also featured Alberta Hunter); first pro job as a singer '51, joined the Johnny Dankworth Seven '52, then with his big band '53; married him '58 and left the band to branch out, though they continued to work together.

Her remarkable range was extended by Dankworth's arrangements, coaxing up the top end. She was typed as a jazz singer; in fact a singing actress of the first rank, she could do anything; the quality of her voice and the flawlessness of her ear often left critics gasping for superlatives. She has performed 20th-century leider, settings of Shakespeare, and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in her own interpretive way, an event which displeased some purists (but Schoenberg, after all, was in part commenting on the cabaret tradition). She recorded Walton's Façade (with Annie Ross); two-disc Cleo Laine Live At Carnegie Hall '73 on RCA and Smilin' Through '82 (produced by Dankworth, Dudley Moore on piano) on CBS were nominated for Grammys. Other LPs: A Lover And His Lass '76 with Dankworth on Esquire, Cleo '78 on Arcade; Day By Day '74 on Buddah; Feel The Warm '76 on EMI; Dankworth's Collette '80 on RCA/Evolution; The Incomparable Cleo Laine '80 on Black Lion; This Is Cleo Laine '81 on EMI; Let The Music Take You '83 on CBS with Williams; also recitals, compilations etc: Word Songs '78 on RCA, Platinum Collection '81 on Cube/PRT, Off The Record '84 on Sierra/WEA, all two-disc sets; plus Shakespeare And All That Jazz and Woman Talk on Fontana, Day By Day on Stanyan, I Am A Song on RCA, Cleo's Choice on GNP, That Old Feeling on CBS, In Retrospect with Dankworth on Polydor. More on RCA, many issued on CD: A Beautiful Thing '74, Born On A Friday '76, Porgy And Bess with Ray Charles '76, Gonna Get Through '80, Best Friends '78 with guitarist John Williams, Sometimes When We Touch '80 with flautist James Galway, Sings Sondheim '87, Blue And Sentimental (with Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing and Joe Williams), Jazz (with Mulligan), Woman To Woman (15 songs by female writers: Peggy Lee, Blossom Dearie, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins etc), Solitude '94 with Dankworth arranging and conducting the Duke Ellington ghost band.

A versatile entertainer, she played the lead in the Sandy Wilson musical Valmouth '58, sang in Brecht/Weill Seven Deadly Sins at the Edinburgh Festival '61, appeared in film The Roman Spring Of Mrs Stone '61, played in London revival of Show Boat '71-3, in '77 Cleo On Broadway and the Jubilee Royal Variety Show at the London Palladium, etc.