Cleo Laine - The Platinum Collection Of Cleo Laine (1981) LP

She was born in the London suburb of Southall; her father was a black Jamaican, her mother was English. She started singing and dancing at the age of 3. At the age of 14, she left school and changed many professions, in particular, she was a hairdresser, librarian, pawnshop employee. She got married for the first time in 1947 and divorced 10 years later. She began singing professionally only in 1951, becoming a vocalist in her future husband John Dankworth's band Seven. During this period of her life, she took the pseudonym "Cleo Lane" and became quite famous, performing not only at concerts, but also playing roles in musical performances. In 1958, she secretly married Dankworth, in the same year she played her first dramatic role and then became active in theater and television, as well as continuing to give concerts. She played roles in many plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Euripides. Since 1972, she went on international tours for the first time, and in the early 1980s she began performing frequently in the United States. She collaborated with many famous classical musicians such as James Galway, Nigel Kennedy, Julian Lloyd Webber and John Williams; sang duets with Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, and performed the composition "Moonlight Pierrot" by Arnold Schoenberg.
She died on July 24, 2025 at the age of 97 at her home in Wavendon.