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Annie Ross (born Annabelle Allan Short; 25 July 193021 July 2020) was a British-born American singer and actress, best known as a member of the influential jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. She helped pioneer the vocalese style of jazz singing, with a style described by critic Dave Gelly as "a kind of dreamy watchfulness that is a definition of 1950s hip." In 2010, she was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Kenneth Tynan, who wrote liner notes for Ross, called her "a fallen angel who moves us and then brushes off our sympathy with a shrug of her lips."
Shortly after arriving in the city, she won a token contract with MGM through a children's radio contest run by Paul Whiteman. She subsequently moved with her aunt, Scottish-American singer and actress Ella Logan, to Los Angeles, and her mother, father and brother returned to Scotland. She did not see her parents again until fourteen years later. At the age of seven, she sang "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" in Our Gang Follies of 1938, and played Judy Garland's character's sister in Presenting Lily Mars (1943).
At the age of 14, she wrote the song "Let's Fly", which won a songwriting contest and was recorded by Johnny Mercer and the Pied Pipers.
At the end of 10th grade, she left school, changed her name to Annie Ross, and went to Europe, where she established her singing career. She changed her surname to Ross during the plane trip to Prestwick; in a 2011 interview, she said: "My aunt was very fanciful and she said I had an Irish grandmother called Ross, so that's where that surname came from."
In February 1956, the British music magazine NME reported that Ross's version of the song "I Want You to Be My Baby" was banned by the BBC due to the lyric "Come upstairs and have some loving".
She recorded seven albums with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross between 1957 and 1962. Their first, Sing a Song of Basie (1957), was to have been performed by a group of singers hired by Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert with Ross brought in only as vocal consultant. It was decided that the trio should attempt to record the material and overdub all the additional vocals themselves, but the first two tracks were recorded and deemed unsatisfactory so they ditched the dubbing idea. The resulting album was a success, and the trio became an international hit. Over the next five years, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross toured all over the world and recorded such albums as The Hottest New Group in Jazz (1959), Sing Ellington (1960), High Flying (1962), and The Real Ambassadors (1962), written by Dave Brubeck and featuring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae.
Ross left the group in 1962. In 1964 she opened a nightclub in London. Annie's Room hosted Joe Williams, Nina Simone, Stuff Smith, Blossom Dearie, Anita O'Day, Jon Hendricks, and Erroll Garner.
Her adulthood film roles included Liza in Straight On till Morning (1972), Claire in Alfie Darling (1976), Diana Sharman in Funny Money (1983), Vera Webster in Superman III (1983), Mrs. Hazeltine in Throw Momma from the Train (1987), Rose Brooks in Witchery (1988), Loretta Cresswood in Pump Up the Volume (1990), Tess Trainer in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), and Lydia in Blue Sky (1994). She also appeared as Granny Ruth in the horror films Basket Case 2 (1990) and (1991). She also had a bit part in Robert Altman's The Player in 1992. Ross also starred in Scottish Television's comedy-drama Charles Endell Esquire (1979).
She provided the speaking voice for Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man (1973), and Ingrid Thulin's singing voice in Salon Kitty (1976). On stage, she appeared in Cranks (1955; London and New York City), The Threepenny Opera (1972), The Seven Deadly Sins (1973) at the Royal Opera House, Kennedy's Children (1975) at Arts Theatre, London, Side by Side by Sondheim, and in the Joe Papp production of The Pirates of Penzance (1982).
She became a United States citizen in 2001. In her later years she had a relationship that lasted for the rest of her life with Dave Usher, a businessman and co-founder of Dee Gee Records (along with Dizzy Gillespie), a label for which Ross had recorded with him in 1952. Ross died in New York City on 21 July 2020 from emphysema and heart disease, four days before her 90th birthday.
In July 2006 a one-woman play entitled TWISTED: The Annie Ross Story by Brian McGeachan premiered at The Space Theatre in London, starring Verity Quade. It focused on her stormy relationship with her aunt, Broadway legend Ella Logan, her brief affair with the comedian Lenny Bruce and her addiction to heroin. The play transferred to the Brockley Jack Theatre in London that same year, with Ross being played by Betsy Pennington.
A documentary about Ross's life, entitled No One But Me, premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2012.
With Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks
| Voice, uncredited |
| Uncredited |
| Singing voice |
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