Annie Ross, the British singer who became world famous with the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and had a varied acting career, died at 89 at her home in New York City.
His death was due to emphysema and heart disease, confirmed his manager, Jim Coleman.
Ross was born Annabel Short in 1930 to Scottish vaudeville artists John and Mary Short, and the family migrated to New York when Ross was four years old. She went to live with her musical theater star aunt, Ella Logan, and quickly landed acting roles in childhood, including an appearance alongside Judy Garland in 1943 Presenting Lily Mars. “They used to call me the Scottish Temple Shirley,” she recalled more. late.
After a stint in Europe, he settled in New York, where he began recording songs both solo and in trio with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks. She was an advocate of vocals, a singing style where the vocal line corresponds to the melody of a jazz improvisation. A key example is their 1959 album Sing Along With Basie, a collaboration with Count Basie’s jazz orchestra, which later received a Hall of Fame Grammy Award in 1998. The trio recorded seven albums, including The Real Ambassadors from 1962. in collaboration with Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck.
Ross Twisted’s solo song was a hit in 1952, and was covered by Joni Mitchell for her album Court and Spark, as well as by Bette Midler. He also collaborated with trumpeter-vocalist Chet Baker and others.
He left the trio and New York to overcome heroin addiction and said, “I knew that if I returned to the United States, I could die.” He opened a nightclub in London, where Nina Simone was among the artists, and returned to acting after filing for bankruptcy. In addition to the roles in Superman III, Throw Momma from the Train and the Alfie Alfie Darling sequel, she also provided the voice of Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man. She also continued to sing in theaters and nightclubs.
Robert Altman chose her in his acclaimed 1993 film Short Cuts, saying: “I heard her sing a lot in my house after dinner, and fell in love with her passion for her music. She hears an entire band inside her head. She also cast it on The Player the year before.
In 1949, when her career was taking off, she had an affair with jazz drummer Kenny Clarke, and gave birth to a son who was cared for by the Clarke family. She also had a brief relationship with comedian Lenny Bruce: She said that Bruce “would write ‘I love you’ on an airplane bag and mail it to me.” She married actor Sean Lynch in 1963, and the couple divorced in 1975.
.
