Annie Ross (born Annabelle McCauley Allan Short[1][2]; 25 July 1930 – 21 July 2020) was a British-American singer and actress, best known as a member of the influential jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. She pioneered the vocalese style of jazz singing,[3][4] with a style described by critic Dave Gelly as "a kind of dreamy watchfulness that is a definition of 1950s hip."[4] In 2010, she was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.[5]
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."[6]
Ross was born in Surrey, England,[2] the daughter of Scottish vaudevillians John "Jack" Short and Mary Dalziel Short (née Allan). Her brother was Scottish entertainer and theatre producer and director Jimmy Logan.[7] She first appeared on stage at age three.[2] At the age of four, she travelled to New York by ship with her family; she later recalled that they "got the cheapest ticket, which was right in the bowels of the ship."[8]
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.[8] She did not see her parents again until fourteen years later.[2] 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).[9][10]
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.[10][11]
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.[9] 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."[12]
In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice that would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name, a classic example of the genre.[8][13][14] The song, first released in 1952 (later collected on the album King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings), was an underground hit, and resulted in her winning Down Beat magazine's New Star award.[9][13][15]
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".[16]
She recorded seven albums with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross between 1957 and 1962.[17] 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.[18][19]
In 1949, Ross had a brief affair with drummer Kenny Clarke. This affair produced a son, Kenny Clarke Jr. (born 1950), who was raised by Clarke's brother and his wife.[9][21] During her time with Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, she became addicted to heroin and in the late 1950s had an affair with the comedian Lenny Bruce, who was also having drug problems. By 1960, Carol Sloane was substituting for her on tour. After a performance by the trio in London in May 1962, she remained in London to confront her drug addiction.[9]
In 1963, she married actor Sean Lynch; they divorced in 1975, and he died in a car crash soon afterwards.[9][10] By that time, she had also lost her home and declared bankruptcy.[9]
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.[25] The play transferred to the Brockley Jack Theatre in London that same year, with Ross being played by Betsy Pennington.[26]
