Drugs, debt... and the crazy life of a fallen star
As Scottish jazz legend Annie Ross dies at 89...
AT THE height of her fame she was the undisputed queen of American jazz. Night after night throughout the 1950s and early 60s her performances electrified audiences at clubs and concert halls in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Anchored by the rhythm of the brass section and double bass, Annie Ross’s voice soared and spun with pyrotechnic virtuosity.
Her dazzling vocal style – as bold as the fiery red hair which was clear evidence of her Scottish roots – saw her perform alongside some of the jazz world’s greats, such as Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
Boyfriends included crooner Tony Bennett and stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce (she calmly turned down marriage proposals from both), while friends included Rat Pack singer Sammy Davis Jr, guitar icon Jimi Hendrix, jazz singer Billie Holiday and saxophonist Charlie Parker.
Yet the glamour and excitement of the jazz scene also brought her into contact with many temptations – leading to a battle with heroin addiction.
Now, following Ross’s death on Tuesday at the age of 89, her sister Heather Capaldi – also her closest surviving relative – has spoken movingly about the singer, paying tribute to her talent and determination and chronicling her transformation: from her birth into a family of famous Scottish entertainers to becoming first a child star and then a jazz legend.
She recalled how their brother, Scottish comedian and entertainer Jimmy Logan, saved Ross’s life by helping her to beat her heroin addiction, taking her to detox at a Highland cottage.
She also spoke of Ross’s later reinvention as an actress, her heartache at the loss of both a husband and son, and the final sadness of her death in New York, surviving on welfare payments.
Speaking from her home in Florida, Scots-born Ms Capaldi, 87, said: ‘Annie had an amazing life and she was blessed to reach her 90th year.
‘She had such talent and she was beautiful. She could sing, write songs and act. She was the whole package.’
THE musical sensation that was Annie Ross was born Annabelle Macauley Allan Short on July 25, 1930, with showbusiness running through her veins. Her parents were Glasgow-born vaudeville stars Jack and May Short, both entertainers from childhood and contemporaries of Sir Harry Lauder. Each had been born either side of the dawning of the 20th Century. Performing as Pa and Ma Logan, the couple were on tour when Ross was born – in the Surrey town of Mitcham.
Having first trod the boards at the age of only three, she was seven when she auditioned and won a contract with the film studio MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, while her parents were performing in New York.
Required to relocate to Los Angeles, she lived there with her aunt, Ella Logan, and did not see her parents for several years.
The movie mogul Louis B Mayer, MGM’s co-founder, nicknamed her ‘Scotland’s Shirley Temple’.
She made her film debut in the 1938 short Our Gang before starring alongside Judy Garland in 1943’s Presenting Lily Mars.
But she really excelled as a singer and songwriter, winning a talent contest when she was 14 with her song Let’s Fly – a hit for Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers.
From there, her legion of friends grew as she established herself as a jazz star in her own right and later as one-third of an exceptional trio, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. The closest friends among them included Hendrix and Holiday, who both marvelled at Ross’s dizzying vocal range.
In later years Ross was equally at ease in Hollywood as she was performing alongside those greats, propelled by her family’s relentless work ethic.
Ms Capaldi said: ‘Even at an early age Annie was a great performer.
‘The family had been touring and were in New York, where our aunt Ella was doing a Broadway show at that time. Because Annie had signed a contract with MGM she, our mother and Aunt Ella went to California and the rest of the family returned home.
‘But after a while Mum and Aunt Ella had an argument. Our mother went home to Scotland without Annie because she was under contract to the film studio.
‘Annie always felt she had been left behind, which was the truth, but we all had that ethic that if you were knocked down, you got up, you stood up and you kept going.’
As a teenager, Ross returned to Scotland, and was already used to the trappings of success.
Ms Capaldi said: ‘We picked Annie up at Prestwick Airport.
‘She was used to chauffeurs in Los Angeles and must have wondered what happened when she saw us. We had two cars, one of which had no windows, so all the luggage went in that one while she and Jimmy rode in the other. We had gone through the war and there was rationing – quite different to her life in America.
‘I was 14 years old at the time and completely flabbergasted. She was so different and so beautiful and from such opulence.’
For a short time, Ross joined the rest of the Logan family living in Gourock, Renfrewshire, and performing at Glasgow’s legendary Metropole Theatre.
In 1947, she moved to Paris, where she worked with several jazz greats – including saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie – and she shared a flat with novelist James Baldwin. It was there she met jazz drummer Kenny
Clarke, with whom she had a son, the late Kenny Clarke Jr. Parker became his Godfather.
Ross’s own jazz career won international acclaim when she wrote the 1952 song Twisted, later covered by Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler.
Her own version, with Lambert and Hendricks, topped the American Billboard music charts.
Yet she never forgot her roots and onstage she would often perform traditional Scottish songs.
Ross’s nephew, Domenick Allen, 62, said: ‘Annie was of the same calibre as the people she rubbed shoulders with.
‘For a long time she was a close girlfriend of Tony Bennett. He wanted to marry her. And Lenny Bruce wanted to marry her.
‘The first time she met Lenny, she told him a joke. He laughed and that’s what started the relationship.
‘He really dug her. They were mutual spirits, but combining Annie and Lenny would be like combining glycerine and dynamite. She was the quintessential ice cold jazz queen. She was ultra-hip and cool but she would also mention in concerts that she was proud to be Scottish and break into Scottish songs.’
EVENTUALLY, the lifestyle took its toll and, like Bruce, who died of a heroin overdose in 1966, Annie feared she too would lose her life to addiction. After Lambert, Hendricks & Ross finished a club date in London in May 1962, concerned that she would not survive a return to New York, Ross returned to Scotland.
Ms Capaldi said: ‘Annie mixed with the jazz crowd and she had taken heroin and kicked the habit more than once.
‘Then she dated and lived with Lenny Bruce, and he took heroin and she went back on it again. She had tried to give up heroin in New York, but it wasn’t until she was in the trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and they came to the UK that our brother, Jimmy, got a hold of her.
‘He put her up in a cottage in a remote part of the Highlands and helped her to kick the habit.
‘When Jimmy found the cottage he made sure it was isolated, so that she was also isolated from temptation, and he got her clean.
‘What Jimmy did for Annie was the sort of thing I would expect from him. He was very big-hearted.
‘She quit the heroin and after that she was fine.’
Within a year of going cold turkey, she married English actor Sean Lynch, with whom she briefly ran a London nightclub, Annie’s Room which was often frequented by stars including Hendrix and British jazz favourite Georgie Fame, with whom she recorded an album.
In 1975, she declared bankruptcy, lost her home and divorced Lynch, who died soon after in a car crash.
As her career waned, she continued to perform, though not always to packed venues.
Mr Allen said: ‘I shared many stages with Annie and she was ferocious. I mean that in a positive sense because she was one of the giants in music.
‘I remember playing with Annie in Las Vegas in 1984 in a small jazz room at the Golden Nugget and she said to me, “Do you want to go and see Sammy Davis Jr? He’s playing at the Desert Inn”.
‘We went the next night and she introduced me to Sammy. We told him we were doing a show the next night and he said, “OK, I’ll be there”. But our third show the next night was at two in the morning and had zero people.
‘Then Sammy walked in with his wife Altovise and we got up and performed in this empty nightclub in Las Vegas with Sammy and his wife the only people at a table at the very back of the room.
‘At the end of the concert Sammy stood up and gave us a standing ovation of one and that was, of course, because of my aunt.’
Following her success as singer, Ross also pursued an acting career and appeared in almost 20 feature films including Superman III, Basket Case and director Robert Altman’s Short Cuts.
Her voice replaced Britt Ekland’s in the 1973 horror classic The Wicker Man, also starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.
Ross returned to the US in 1985 but came home to the UK in 1996 to attend her brother Jimmy’s OBE investiture.
Ms Capaldi said: ‘Annie and I flew over to Buckingham Palace and joined Jimmy and his wife Angela.
‘We had front seats, naturally. On the balcony above the ballroom there was the regimental band playing and it was just magical.’
Ross became a US citizen in 2001 and she was inducted into the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Jazz Wall of Fame in 2009. She performed right up to her later years, including a weekly residency at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Room until it closed in 2017. But by then she was dependent on social security cheques to eke out a living.
Too frail to be moved from her Manhattan apartment, friends including her manager Mary Scott established a GoFundMe online appeal to help pay for her medical care at home.
Survived by her partner of 20 years, David Usher, she died of emphysema and heart disease last Tuesday and she was cremated on Thursday – two days shy of what would have been her 90th birthday.
Mr Allen said: ‘Annie was truly a survivor of the jazz era.
‘To have a range that goes from starring in a Little Rascals musical at MGM when she was six or seven years old to all that she did in jazz, theatre and acting shows her talent.’
MS CAPALDI added: ‘People will remember her for being Jimmy’s sister but they’ll remember her more for Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. She also wrote a couple of songs and she wrote Twisted, which was a wonderful song and she wrote it very early in her career.
‘In the end, I think her body just fell apart, but she almost made it to 90, which is no mean feat.
‘Music was her life. She was not well off. She had her social security, but she wasn’t flush at all.
‘Showbusiness is not the best business to be in. The social security helped to keep her going and the GoFundMe appeal helped.
‘She was very warm-hearted and very giving. If anybody needed anything, she would step forward to help.
‘She lived her life as she wanted to live her life and she had an amazing life.
‘She did so many things and met so many people and she was just wonderful. She had a great life.’