The singer who lived a jazz life
ANNIE ROSS 1930-2020
BY RICK FULTON SCOTLAND’S Shirley Temple – Annie Ross – has died a few days before her 90th birthday.
The jazz legend died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan having reportedly suffered from emphysema and heart disease.
A genre-changing singer and actress, who was born Annabelle Allan Short in 1930, she was also the sister of the late Jimmy Logan.
American jazz singer Curtis Stigers tweeted: “Rest In Cool, Annie Ross.”
Annie started out as a child star, billed as Scotland’s Shirley Temple, before becoming part of vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
She also acted in such films as Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Superman III. Her deep voice replaced Britt Ekland’s in 1973 horror classic The Wicker Man.
Born in Mitcham, south
London, Annie was the daughter of Glaswegian vaudevillians John and Mary Short, who took her to LA when she was four. She later recalled: “They got the cheapest ticket, which was right in the bowels of the ship.”
In 1938, Annie made her film debut in Our Gang Follies, in which she sang The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond. She went on to play Judy Garland’s younger sister in 1943’s Presenting Lily Mars. While she didn’t invent “vocalese”, a singing style where original lyrics are set to an instrumental jazz solo, she popularised it when she teamed up with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks in 1962.
At 22, she wrote the lyrics to vocalese song Twisted, which Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler covered.
Annie beat heroin addiction and bankruptcy. She had a son with drummer Kenny Clarke, an affair with the comedian Lenny Bruce and married actor Sean Lynch, who died in a car crash soon after their divorce in 1975.
She was the focus of 2012 documentary No One But Me. Its producer Gill Parry said: “Annie was a cultural trailblazer. Annie lived a jazz life, and she inspired great friendship and devotion.”