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Cleo Laine, a British jazz, pop and classical singer who received Grammy nominations in all three of those categories, has died. Her family announced the news today. She was 97 years old. Laine was known for her smoky vocals and four-octave range. Critic Bob Mondello remembers it well.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: It was the mid-1970s when a concert-going friend told me he'd just been to Carnegie Hall and heard the greatest pop vocalist alive. She was coming to D.C., he said, get tickets. So I did.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: We'd like to introduce you to Miss Cleo Laine.
(APPLAUSE)
MONDELLO: Diaphanous gown, flowered print, an afro that looked like a sunburst mane as the spotlight hit it - and then, when the applause died away, a breathy voice, smoke and gravel.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING")
CLEO LAINE: (Singing) I know where I'm going, and I know who's going with me. I know who I'll love, but the devil knows who I'll marry.
MONDELLO: Pretty enough, certainly expressive, but greatest ever? Then came the second number, accompanied by her husband, John Dankworth, and his band.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
LAINE: (Singing) Music keeps playing inside my head, over and over and over again. My friend, there's no end to the music.
MONDELLO: It was a song designed to establish her jazz credentials. In Britain, she and Dankworth had been playing clubs and concerts since the 1950s, but American audiences were just meeting her. It was also designed to show off her range. From this...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
LAINE: (Singing) Down.
MONDELLO: ...Her lowest note, to her - well, just listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
LAINE: (Vocalizing).
MONDELLO: Seems high, right? Just getting started.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
LAINE: (Vocalizing).
MONDELLO: Higher, but there's more.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MUSIC")
LAINE: (Vocalizing).
(Singing) But the music keeps playing and won't let the cold get me down.
MONDELLO: So vocal pyrotechnics are fun, but they're not everything for a pop singer. Laine, I discovered in years of following her, had everything. Give her a comic number, and she'd land every joke - a talent she developed in the theater, where she began her career as an actress and was soon stopping such shows as "Showboat" and "A Little Night Music." Give her the right ballad, and she could nearly stop your heart.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEND IN THE CLOWNS")
LAINE: (Singing) Losing my timing this late in my career.
MONDELLO: I remember her holding the last note of "Send In The Clowns" at an outdoor amphitheater many years after I saw that first concert, and I swear, even the crickets stopped for her - the audience so captivated no one wanted to break the silence.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SEND IN THE CLOWNS")
LAINE: (Singing) Maybe next year.
MONDELLO: As she finished that last note, I started counting - one, 1,000, two, 1,000, three - and got to seven before every hand in the place came together in the only thunderclap of applause I've ever heard.
Laine continued performing for six decades, all but the last with her husband, saxophonist John Dankworth. He died hours before they were to give a concert in 2010, and she went on without him, only telling the audience at the end that he'd passed away because, she said, that's what he'd have wanted. In recent years, her voice had dimmed but not enough that there was ever reason to argue with the Sunday Times critic who said in the 1970s that Cleo Laine was, quite simply, the best singer in the world.
I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LAINE: (Vocalizing). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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