Dame Cleo Laine (1927 - 2025)

Sad - but not unexpected - news that one of my all-time favourite singers just passed away at the grand old age of 97. I wrote about Cleo Laine here trough the years, since I listened her for decades and was admiring her voice forever. She will always be known as the British Queen of Jazz with fascinating and long career, mostly inseparable from her husband and musical partner John Dankworth with whom she criss-crossed continents, while experimenting with various music genres and selflessly encouraging potential musicians in the backyard of their countryside home - founded in 1970, what started as a free summer project it is called The Stables Theatre now (performers who played there include Dave Brubeck, Amy Winehouse, Nigel Kennedy and James Galway). Both Laine and her husband will be remembered for bringing Jazz to wider audiences and adding class to a genre that at the time was considered less respectable - even though they never strayed too far from Jazz, by working with wide net of musicians, they refused any pigeonholing and would enthusiastically embrace various music types (Dankworth in film music and classical, Laine in music theatre, pop, classical). Perhaps most significantly, they would set poetry in music (starting with 1950s they would set Shakespeare sonnets to Jazz and worked on this trough decades, resulting in three full albums in 1964, 1978 and 2005) and this surely speaks about their artistic merits.

Besides being totally in love with her voice and charisma (Laine was a very attractive lady with Caribbean father and British mother), I have always enjoyed the sheer wealth of her recorded music - trough the years it was always a pleasure to hear how skilfully she would approach anything from latest Carole King pop to Stephen Sondheim musicals, rowdy Bessie Smith blues to Porgy & Bess, from full-blown big orchestra to acoustic guitar or piano solo, she was always instantly recognisable and brilliant. With all these accolades, it is not surprising that her success in UK eventually opened doors to acceptance in US where she might have been the first Brit awarded with Grammy as Jazz singer of the year - her arrival cemented and immortalised as a guest in a hugely popular "The Muppet Show" that always hosted the biggest names. I watched this as a kid and I could watch it anytime again, its one of my favourite "Muppet Show"  moments. 

Interesting to note how UK media celebrates her, but avoids saying "the best British Jazz singer" - to avoid any possible arguments, they simply proclaim she was "the most successful British Jazz singer ever" which I guess can be no doubt. Her obituary in The Guardian is genuinely glowing and Brits are apparently really proud of her. Reading the obituaries and articles about Laine now, I was touched how many people remember the couple fondly - they were huge stars in their prime - this is perhaps the most important, this is what is left behind: not fame, not material success but to be remembered with affection for bringing beauty into lives of other people. I will love Cleo Laine forever. 

Documentary: "Enigma" by Zackary Drucker (2025)

Now this was something I watched with such a pleasure that I might even re-watch it again.

It is a story about two very famous transgender people who might have started together but drifted apart later in life, living completely different lives and following their own paths. It was directed by Zackary Drucker who is transgender herself and can be seen in the movie. 

The documentary contrasts lives of April Ashley and Amanda Lear and mainly uses archival interviews and excerpts from Ashley's own memoirs as a testament of how the life back in the 1950s and 1960s was: we are talking about the times when crossdressing was punished by law (but strangely enough, allowed as a part of the stage act) so small wonder many crossdressers gravitated towards famous and notorious Paris nightclub "Le Carrousel de Paris" where many of them found employment as a glamorous performers. The part of documentary that deals with "Le Carrousel" is genuinely the highlight of the movie and I would not be surprised if the club eventually get its own documentary because its really astonishing that in conservative post-WW2 Europe such a place existed, even if French love to think of themselves as free-spirited, but according to surviving performers, it was also a very, very buttoned-up place. Jet set would arrive to be entertained by sensationally attractive boys who posed as Hollywood glamour beauties: the illusion was cemented by actual surgeries some of them got in Morocco.

April Ashley died in 2021 so the movie uses her old interviews to confirm her perspective: he was a beautiful boy who did not fit in his Liverpool surroundings and was in fact, often beaten, harassed and bullied there. No wonder he fitted perfectly in "Le Carrousel" where everybody enjoyed the camaraderie, even though there was obvious competition and jealousy - they all shared backstage life and supported each other against the prejudicial outside world. Ashley was actually fairly successful until sex operation, when she decided to start a completely new life in UK as a photo model - quickly outed by salacious tabloids and destroyed in a court after a highly publicised divorce from a Baron Corbett (who claimed he was deliberately deceived). The scandal destroyed Ashley's professional and personal life and she had never recovered from it, though much later in life when social atmosphere changed, she eventually got some moral satisfaction from being recognised as transgender equality - but this was after decades of  criticism and media assaults. 

While Ashley and her contemporaries from "Le Carrousel" all claim that there was a young pretty boy (who also painted) working with them and who eventually also did sex operation - consequently starting a new life and rejecting old contacts - Amanda Lear absolutely refuses to admit anything about it and claims her own story. Now in her eighties, Lear is a true diva, living grand life and comes across as confident, entertaining, witty and totally in control of her life. Director Zackary Drucker tries all the tricks to corral her into admitting trans past but Lear is too clever to get caught - even when pictures of "Le Carrousel" are pushed in her face, Lear won't budge and to be honest, Drucker comes across as nuisance - simultaneously flattering Lear and claiming she was the biggest trans celebrity ever, the northern light, etc but watching like a hawk for any sign of capitulation. There is a fleeting moment when we see something going on inside Lear's mind - but more I think about it, more I am prone to understand it was probably sad realisation that after a lifetime of fencing off questions about her gender, she was fooled into expecting genuinely respectful interview which turned into just another same old scandal digging expose. 

At the end, it is a curious look at two lives that had completely different path. For all her late-life awards, Ashley is a tragic life because she was constantly haunted by tabloids. Lear used her notoriety to create intriguing stage image and became successful disco star with cult following across the world - journalists might have been annoying and repetitive but she knew how to deal with them. Director Zackary Drucker might say whatever she wants ("oh, I love Lear, she was always my idol") but the movie focuses heavily on unmasking Lear and eventually it became really distasteful - at this point, Lear is retired eighty year old who deserves to live her life as she pleases, there is absolutely no need to dig & unearth anything if she is happy to live whatever life she created for herself. She does not need to apologise or explain herself to anybody.