Thurles Information

English veteran jazz singer and actress Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth (born Clementine Dinah Hitching) has sadly passed away.

Cleo Laine – Send in the Clowns

Lyrics: American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Vocals: Veteran jazz singer and actress Dame Cleo Laine.

Born to a then single mother, Ms Minnie Hitching, a farmer’s daughter from Swindon. Her father, Jamaican World War I veteran, Mr Alex Campbell and her mother both married after her birth.

Lady Dankworth, who began singing aged 3, during her career was nominated for five Grammy awards and would become the first British singer to win a Grammy Award, in a jazz category, having shared the stage with such accomplished performers as Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra.

She made her first film appearance, at the age of 12 years, as an urchin in Alexander Korda’s film “The Thief of Baghdad” in 1940. With parents now divorced, she left school at 14, working as a hairdressers assistant, as a hat maker assistant and in a pawnbroker’s shop.

In 1946, Lady Dankworth married Mr George Langridge, a roof tiler, with whom she gave birth to one son, Stuart. The couple divorced some eleven years, in 1957. Her son from that marriage, predeceased Lady Dankworth in 2019, aged 72 years.

On receiving an invitation to try out with the jazz group, “The Johnny Dankworth Seven” in 1951, Clementine was offered a job at £7:00 per week.

One problem now arose; her name was too long to fit on posters, so the band put some shorter alternatives into a hat. “Cleo” and “Laine” got pulled out, so she now became newly christened as “Cleo Laine”.

Following her divorce from George Langridge, in 1958, she married, her band leader in secret, at Hampstead Registry Office, the now late English jazz composer, saxophonist, clarinettist and writer of film scores John Phillip William Dankworth, (Johnny Dankworth, 1927-2010). The couple had two children together, bassist Alec Dankworth and singer Jacqui Dankworth.
They would remain married until his death and on that same day, having performed at a concert at “The Stables”, Buckinghamshire, UK, (to mark the venue’s 40th anniversary) Lady Dankworth announced Johnny’s death, on stage, at the end of her performance.

Awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1979, she reluctantly became a ‘Dame’ in 1997; an honour she hesitated to accept, but finally deciding to do so “for jazz”.

Once described as “quite simply the best singer in the world,” Lady Dankworth passed away yesterday, July 24th, at her home in Wavendon, Milton Keynes, UK, at the ripe old age of 97 years.