Linda Lewis, Backing Singer for David Bowie and More, Dead at 72

Linda Lewis, a backing singer for David Bowie, Rod Stewart and others, died on Wednesday on the age of 72.

The information was confirmed on social media by her sister, Dee Lewis Clay. “It’s with the best unhappiness and remorse we share the information that our beloved stunning sister Linda Lewis handed away as we speak peacefully at her dwelling,” Clay wrote.

Lewis was born Linda Ann Fredericks in West Ham, an space of East London. She started performing at an early age, showing in 1961’s A Style of Honey and as one of many screaming followers within the Beatles’ A Laborious Day’s Night time film from 1964. She additionally carried out “Dancing within the Road” with John Lee Hooker at a membership outdoors London within the early ’60s. “It was within the afternoon, it was 1961 and I used to be with my mum,” Lewis later recalled in an interview with Blues & Soul. “My mum was like, ‘Go on, stand up there and sing!’ I did not even know who John Lee Hooker was! And she or he mentioned, ‘Go on, go and ask him!'” Hooker then launched her to a musician named Ian Samwell, who in flip launched her to supervisor Don Arden. It was round this time that she modified her final title to Lewis, a tribute to R&B singer Barbara Lewis.

Lewis recorded with a number of teams within the late ’60s — together with White Rabbit and the Ferris Wheel — and likewise appeared on the first Glastonbury Competition, the place she sang with Terry Reid and David Lindley. She signed a solo cope with Warner Bros. Data however targeted a lot of her time working as a session musician, singing on Cat Stevens’ Catch Bull at 4 (1972), Bowie’s Aladdin Sane (1973), Hummingbird’s self-titled debut (1975), Rick Wakeman’s Lisztomania (1975), Stewart’s Blondes Have Extra Enjoyable (1978) and Tonight I am Yours (1981), amongst others.

One in all her solo hits, a music she wrote known as “Rock-a-Doodle-Doo,” landed at No. 15 on the U.Ok. chart in 1973. “I used to be listening to Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro pondering, ‘Ah, that is what I may do if I wish to,'” Lewis mentioned in 2018, recalling her shift to songwriting. “I might been in soul revues, doing covers in my lengthy frock, however I wished to sing my very own songs.” A fair greater hit peaked at No. 6 two years later with a canopy of “The Shoop Shoop Tune (It is in His Kiss).” 

Hearken to Linda Lewis’ ‘Rock-a-Doodle-Doo’

Lewis launched six albums in the course of the ’70s and yet another within the ’80s earlier than principally retreating from public performances. She did seem at Glastonbury once more in 1984 and resurfaced in 1992 to sing on Joan Armatrading’s album Sq. the Circle.

“After I look again, I notice I’ve lived an awfully wealthy life,” Lewis wrote in her memoir [via The Guardian]. “Would I do all of it once more, given an opportunity? No. Would I do a few of it once more? Actually.”