A national treasure who’s still singing at 90
As she prepares to receive a lifetime achievement award, Dame Cleo Laine sits down with Jasper Rees
Dame Cleo Laine is to receive a lifetime achievement award from Jazz FM. As she was born in 1927, the jazz station might be accused of taking its time. But the annual award has only been going since 2013, and for the first four years they honoured male musicians. How does the most widely acclaimed jazz musician Britain has ever produced feel about being the first woman to earn the nod?
“It’s not something that you’re going to go ‘Oooo oooo!’,” says Dame Cleo. “I don’t do that too much.” Those famous electric-green eyes ignite in mock excitement.
At the age of 90, Cleo Laine remains resolutely unsentimental. There’s no one quite like her, and from the start there never was. She is a natural contralto whose smoky, rumbling voice could span four octaves. “There were very few contraltos in those days,” she says. “They were all light airy-fairy type singers.” The UK’S dominant female voices in the Fifties belonged to Vera Lynn, Alma Cogan and the Beverley Sisters. The idea of a British woman singing hot sexy scat was unthinkable.
“There was a time when people didn’t enjoy it. The only reason I was singing it was because I loved Ella Fitzgerald.”
Age has barely withered her instrument. When she sang I’ve Got a Crush on You at a 90th birthday concert last November with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the voice sounded remarkably rich and forthright.
It can be heard again when she appears at the (B)old Festival, the Southbank Centre’s celebration of artists past the official retirement age. Does she agree that creative people shouldn’t be pensioned off at 65? “If they’re capable of not spoiling the ship, they should carry on performing. There’s a lot of people who have done that in their careers.”
Laine’s career contains multitudes. She’s the only woman to have been nominated for a Grammy in jazz, pop and classical. Her discography stretches to over a hundred albums.
In 1972 her career went transatlantic when she was summoned to the States by Duke Ellington. “The British, who have been dropping one rock group after another on us for years, have meanwhile been hoarding what must be one of their national treasures,” enthused The New York Times.
A year later she began an association with Carnegie Hall. At the Royal Albert Hall she duetted with Sinatra. “He came to my dressing room and said, ‘Are you ready for this?’ I said, ‘Yeah sure.’ It was a thrill.” The first she met Ella Fitzgerald was in the loo at the Newport Jazz Festival. The queen of scat complimented Laine on her legs, but later sent her two dozen roses when she won her first Grammy in 1983, whereafter they became friends.
‘John Dankworth was my guiding light – I wouldn’t have done as well without him’
I meet Dame Cleo in her home, a rectory in Wavendon a few miles from Milton Keynes. It was here that she and her husband John Dankworth created The Stables, a performance space that hosts hundreds of events a year. At the venue’s 40th-anniversary concert in 2010, Laine performed and only at the end announced that Dankworth, who she had married in 1958, had died earlier that day.
“John was my guiding light,” she says. “I certainly wouldn’t have done as well without him. I didn’t have that will to go into the big wide world.”
They met in a London jazz club in 1951. She’d been sent there by a manager to catch the eye of the leader of the Johnny Dankworth Seven. “I had borrowed my brother’s wife’s fur coat. I thought wearing a blinking fur coat in the summer was the way to influence him. Bill Le Sage was the pianist and when John came in Bill said, ‘You should listen to this girl’.”
She laughs uproariously. “This girl! I’d had a baby, been married and was on the verge of divorce. They offered me a job. It was about £6 a week.”
I suggest that, to begin with, she didn’t have an easy time of it. “I don’t think any woman did in those days, especially in the business. They certainly have a much better chance than the young people in my day.”
Would she have gone on X Factor? “Probably not,” she says punctiliously. “I don’t approve of those programmes personally.”
What does she make of a modern superstar like Beyoncé? Those eyes enlarge and she judders her head in comic horror.
Does she wish to leave a professional legacy? “I have no desire to. I just sing. It’s an odd voice really when you think about it.” She pauses. “I’m still singing at 90!” And her voice sinks into the basement. “Ninety!”
An Evening With Dame Cleo Laine takes place May 18 at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Tickets: 020 3879 9555; southbankcentre.co.uk.