Dame Cleo Laine, the UK’s most successful and celebrated jazz singer, has died aged 97. A statement from her children Jacqui and Alec reads: “It is with deepest sadness that we announce the passing of our dearly beloved mother, Cleo, who died peacefully yesterday afternoon. We will all miss her terribly. The family wish to be given space to grieve and ask for privacy at this very difficult time.” She was well known for a longstanding collaboration with her late husband, the composer and reed player John Dankworth, singing with his jazz bands from the mid-1950s onwards. But she also had a stellar solo career, including in the US, where she became the only female artist to be nominated for Grammy awards in pop, jazz and classical categories; few singers have the versatility to deliver atonal Arnold Schoenberg pieces and to have duetted with Ray Charles.
26th: tom lehrer, purveyor and writer of often topical songs loaded with humour and witticisms (although his scathing disparagement of rock'n'roll didn't age well), 97. worth checking out if you haven't already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
RIP Good author Martin Cruz Smith Novelist best known for Gorky Park and the series of thrillers that followed featuring the Soviet detective Arkady Renko
RIP Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who has died aged 54, having drowned while swimming off the coast of Costa Rica, gained fame worldwide as the cool, charming, occasionally mischievous son of Bill Cosby in one of American television’s most popular sitcoms. The Cosby Show, which ran between 1985 and 1992, was groundbreaking in featuring an affluent African American family in Brooklyn, New York: Cosby starred as Cliff Huxtable, an obstetrician, and Phylicia Rashad as his wife, Clair, a lawyer, with Warner as their middle child, Theo, and Sabrina Le Beauf, Lisa Bonet, Tempestt Bledsoe and Keishia Knight Pulliam as their daughters.
