Black Excellence: Cleo Laine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Laine
Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth (born Clementine Dinah Bullock; 28 October 1927 – 24 July 2025) was an English singer and actress known for her scat singing.[1] She was the wife of jazz composer and musician Sir John Dankworth and the mother of bassist Alec and singer Jacqui Dankworth. Laine had popular success with singles such as “You’ll Answer To Me” and appeared in a range of musical theatre productions. She received a number of awards and honours including appointment as an OBE in 1979, and a Grammy in 1986; she became a dame in 1997.
Early life
Laine was born Clementine Dinah Bullock on 28 October 1927, in Southall, Middlesex, second of the three children of Sylvan Alexander Campbell and Minnie Blanche Bullock (née Hitchings), and was registered under the name Clementine Dinah Bullock.[2][3][4] Her father was a black Jamaican veteran of the First World War who worked as a building labourer and regularly busked.[5][6] Her mother was the child of white English parents from Wiltshire, both of whom had died some years before their daughter’s first marriage to a man named Bullock in 1913.[7]
The family moved constantly, but most of Laine’s childhood was spent in Southall. Her parents married in 1933,[8] but it was not until 1953, when she was 26 and applying for a passport for a forthcoming tour of Germany, that Laine found out her real birth name, owing to her parents not being married at the time and her mother registering her with the surname Bullock.[4]