Cleo Laine, who has died aged 97, was not only the most creatively and materially successful jazz singer the UK scene has known, but was also respected worldwide as one of a handful of truly original jazz-inspired vocalists. From modest beginnings in the pubs and dancehalls of austerity Britain in the 1950s, the diminutive singer with the majestic and agile contralto voice went on to achieve international fame in a career that also embraced acting and writing.
Laine could travel easily in almost any idiom, from jazzy standards-singing to the frontiers of classical music and opera, and she was the only female singer to receive Grammy nominations in the jazz, popular and classical categories. When she became the first British artist to win a Grammy as best female jazz vocalist (for the third of her live Carnegie Hall albums) in 1985, she received two dozen roses from Ella Fitzgerald and a card inscribed: “Congratulations, gal – it’s about time!”
