Annie Ross, the British singer who became globally famous with jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and had a varied acting career, has died aged 89 at her home in New York City.
Ross was born Annabel Short in 1930 to Scottish vaudeville artists John and Mary Short, with the family emigrating to New York when Ross was four.
She left the trio and New York to beat a heroin addiction, saying: “I kind of knew that if I came back to America I might die.”
She was a proponent of vocalese, a singing style where the vocal line is matched to the melody of a jazz improvisation.