Cleo Laine

Dame Cleo Laine, Lady Dankworth, DBE is an English jazz and pop singer and an actress, known for her scat singing and for her vocal range. Though her natural range is that of a contralto, she is able to produce a G above high C, giving her an overall compass of well over three octaves.

Laine was born Clementine Dinah Bullock in Uxbridge, Middlesex, to unmarried parents Alexander Sylvan Campbell, a black Jamaican father who worked as a building labourer and regularly busked, and Minnie Bullock, a white English mother, a farmers daughter from Swindon, Wiltshire. The family moved round constantly, but most of Laines childhood was spent in Southall. She attended the Board School there on Featherstone Road and was sent by her mother for singing and dancing lessons at an early age. She went on to attend Mellow Lane Senior School in Hayes before going to work as an apprentice hairdresser, a hattrimmer, a librarian and in a pawnbrokers shop.

Source: Wikipedia