Was Cleo Laine, dead at 97, a great jazz singer? Not according to her.

The death of Cleo Laine Thursday at the age of 97 has inspired a slew of admiring headlines for the acclaimed English vocal and theater star, nearly all of them hailing her as a great jazz singer. It’s a description Laine, who began performing jazz in 1952, took great exception with.

“I’d had absolutely no experience as a jazz singer then, and I don’t consider myself a jazz singer now,” she insisted in our 1984 San Diego Union interview, which appears in full below.

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