Linda Lewis obituary: Stripped-down soul singer went to the bathroom and walked out on her record deal

A soul singer with an exception voice, she really hated the period when record companies tried to make her a disco diva

Lewis enjoyed solo success in the 1970s and provided backing vocals for such artists as David Bowie and Rod Stewart. Photograph: PA
Lewis enjoyed solo success in the 1970s and provided backing vocals for such artists as David Bowie and Rod Stewart. Photograph: PA

Born: September 27th, 1950

Died: May 3rd, 2023

Linda Lewis, who has died aged 72, was a soul singer with an exceptional voice whose solo career encompassed more than a dozen albums and four UK top 40 hit singles. She was also in demand as a backing vocalist for artists including David Bowie, Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), Rod Stewart, Joan Armatrading and Jamiroquai. During the 1970s, she became one of Britain’s leading female singer-songwriters.

Lewis’s vocal dexterity – her voice ranged across five octaves and drew comparisons with Minnie Riperton – did not always seem to get the material it deserved and, at times, she was pushed by record companies and producers into pop and disco experiments. There was renewed interest in her compositions during the last two decades of her life, however, and tributes were paid by a newer generation of musicians, including the rapper Common and Basement Jaxx.

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She was born Linda Fredericks in Canning Town, East London, to a Guyanese mother and a Jamaican father. After her parents divorced when she was three, she was brought up with five siblings by her mother, an aspiring singer herself, who sent Linda to the Peggy O’Farrell stage school from an early age.

In 1964, while still at a local Catholic convent school, she sang with John Lee Hooker at a gig. Afterwards, Hooker showed an interest in Linda’s talent and the connection led to a record deal with Polydor.

Two successful records followed and Lewis began to pick up commissions as a session singer in the early 70s, working with Marc Bolan and Elton John and appearing on Stevens’s Catch Bull at Four album in 1972, as well as on Bowie’s Aladdin Sane LP in 1973.

A world tour supporting Stevens helped to stoke interest in Lewis’s fourth LP, Not a Little Girl Anymore (1975), which became her best-selling record. As it moved up to No 40 in the UK charts, she also put out her most successful single, It’s in His Kiss, a disco cover of Merry Clayton’s 1963 US hit that made it to No 6.

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By then, Lewis was being buffeted by the music business’s obsession with producing hits. Signed to Arista, she increasingly found her output being dressed up in a way she disapproved of. “I really hated the period when I went disco diva,” she said. “I got very disillusioned, got tired of being treated like a puppet.”

When she was invited to renew her contract at a meeting with senior Arista executives, Lewis excused herself to go to the toilet and never came back.

After a barren period during the 80s and 90s, Lewis returned to Britain, working on Armatrading’s 1992 album Square the Circle and recording a new solo LP, Second Nature, on a small independent label in 1995. Her last solo album, Kiss of Life, came out in 1999, after which public and music industry interest in her idiosyncratic material began to revive. She appeared at Glastonbury in 2003 and 2009 and was performing live on a regular basis right up to her death.

Lewis’s 1977 marriage to the guitarist Jim Cregan ended in divorce. She is survived by her second husband, the booking agent Neil Warnock, whom she married in 2004, and a son, Jesse.