Cleo Laine
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, DBE, born as Clementina Dinah Campbell ( born October 28, 1927 in Middlesex, United Kingdom) is an English jazz singer, classical singer and actress.
Life and work
She was born in a London suburb, the daughter of a father from Jamaica and an English mother. Although she received singing and dancing lessons at an early age she began only in his mid - Zwanzigerin singing professionally Jazz at scat singing style in the band ( Johnny Dankworth Seven and his Big Band since 1954) of the saxophonist and clarinetist John Dankworth ( 1927-2010 ), whom she married in 1958. Their daughter is the jazz singer Jacqui Dankworth (* 1963) and her son of jazz bassist Alec Dankworth (* 1960).
In an appearance at New York's Birdland in 1959 she met Ella Fitzgerald. At the same time she started in the theater ( in the main building of the " angry young men " generation of British playwrights of the 1950s, the Royal Court Theatre, among other things, she played in many Ibsen roles) and perform in musicals such as in the musical Valmouth 1959, in Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins (Edinburgh Festival 1961), in the play " A time to laugh" (1962 with Robert Morley and Ruth Gordon) and in the musical Showboat 1971. reached your "You'll Answer to Me" in 1961 the British Top 10 success was also her album " Shakespeare and all that Jazz " with John Dankworth 1964. starting in the 1970s she also toured regularly in the USA ( Carnegie Hall concert from 1973) and Canada. Great success came in 1980 when "All Woman Jazz Festival " in Kansas. For their live album at Carnegie Hall in 1983 she received her first Grammy. She took albums with Ray Charles ( " Porgy and Bess" ), Mel Tormé ( album "Nothing without you" ), and has appeared with James Galway, Nigel Kennedy, John Williams ( album " Best friends " ) and Julian Lloyd Webber. Her interpretation of Arnold Schoenberg 's Pierrot Lunaire earned her her first Grammy in the field of classical music. Also in the 1980s, she performed in musicals, including in the premiere of The mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway, as Merry Widow, in Stephen Sondheim 's A Little Night Music and Into the woods.
She is an ambassador for the SOS Children's Villages. In their home Wavendon in Buckinghamshire, she founded the cultural center " The Stables ".
Awards
In 1979 she was appointed by Elizabeth II to Officer of the Order of the British Empire ( OBE), 1997, she was knighted as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE ) and could now call " lady " - nine years before her husband was also knighted as a Knight Bachelor. Together with him, they thus formed virtually the " Royal Couple" of British jazz. She is an honorary doctor of Berklee College, the Universities of Cambridge, York, Luton and the Open University. In 1991 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American record industry.
Cleo Laine is so far the only person who has both received Grammy awards in the classical, jazz and pop business.