Cleo Laine, Celebrated Jazz Singer and Edwin Drood Tony Nominee, Dies at 97

Cleo Laine, the British singer and actress dubbed the Queen of Jazz, who earned a Tony nomination for her role in the The Mystery of Edwin Drood on Broadway, died on July 25. She was 97.

Born Clementina Campbell on October 28, 1927, in Southall in West London, she quit school in her early teens, taking on a variety of odd jobs while she auditioned for singing work. In 1951, she graduated from singing on the pub circuit after being hired as a vocalist for the Johnny Dankworth Seven, at which point she adopted the name “Cleo Laine.” She gained a large following with the band and married Dankworth in 1958. (Dankworth died in 2010.) That same year, she took on her first theatrical role in Flesh to Tiger in London.

Even as her singing career took off on both sides of the Atlantic—she became the only singer to receive receive Grammy Award nominations in jazz, popular and classical categories—she began to apply herself to acting in her native England, going on to perform the title role in Hedda Gabler and in productions of Show Boat, Colette, The Seven Deadly Sins and The Merry Widow. 

Her American theater career took more time to start in earnest. Some years after making her Broadway debut in concert in Cleo on Broadway in 1977, she accepted an invitation to join The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to be directed by Joseph Papp in Central Park, originating the role of Princess Puffer and transferring with the production to Broadway. “What was amazing about that company,” she wrote in her memoir Cleo, “was that we all believed we could deliver and did."

The following year, after earning her Tony nomination but while still performing on Broadway, she won the Grammy for Best Female Jazz Vocal Performance for the album Cleo at Carnegie: The 10th Anniversary Concert. From 1988, she played the Witch in the touring production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods, bagging the role without an audition because the writer-director James Lapine had seen her in Edwin Drood. She won a Los Angeles Critics’ Award for her performance.

She would continue to perform and to attract plaudits for decades and was made a dame in 1997. Laine is survived by her son Alec Dankworth, daughter Jacqui Dankworth, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.