Linda Nicholas (born Linda Hoile, 13 April 1946), known by her stage name Linda Hoyle, is a singer, songwriter and art therapist. She is best known for her work with the band Affinity (1968–1971), as well as for her collaboration with Karl Jenkins on her album Pieces of Me, produced in 1971. Hoyle's latest album, The Fetch, produced by Mo Foster, was released by Angel Air on 7 August 2015. In 2018, she was co-lyricist on a chamber opera, Look! An Opera in 9 Paintings – about a couple on an awkward date at an art gallery – which debuted on June 3, 2018, to sold-out performances at Museum London, Canada.
Early life and influences
Linda was born and grew up in Hammersmith, London. Her mother, Marjorie ("Madge", née Penfold), was a shorthand typist, working with the Kensington and Chelsea Police Force and CID. Her father, Gordon ("Dick") was an accountant with Sun Life Insurance.
For the first decade of Linda's life, the family lived in a small ground-floor flat with few amenities. Nevertheless, on a Saturday, Dick would buy a new 78 rpm jazz record which was played for the family to dance to. This music consisted mostly of Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow and others, with an historic backlog of Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Mugsy Spanier and Fletcher Henderson. Oddities from 1920s and 30s jazz were the backbone of Linda's musical experience, stirred into Madge's attempts to introduce classical music – Vaughan Williams, Tchaikovsky, Elgar.
Her early education was at St Peter's, a Church school, then Chiswick County School for Girls. She was told in no uncertain terms by her music teacher, Miss Cooper, that she showed no ability. However, she happily sang Everly Brothers songs, in harmony with friends, in the echoing school toilets.
Wendy Hoile, Linda's younger sister, was able to sing in harmony from a very young age. She played guitar and sang in a band, Blanch Carter and the Lounge Lizards, in the late 1960s and early 70s. Both Linda and her sister learnt first to play the ukulele and then the guitar. They performed together often at family gatherings and parties, sometimes using the family convector heater, a Valor, as a primitive piece of echo and reverb equipment, singing into it even when it was lit.
Linda's main vocal influence, Billie Holiday, was introduced to her at 16 by a family friend who played her "Strange Fruit". She went immediately and spent her savings on Volume One of the CBS compilation The Billie Holiday Story, learning all the vocals note for note. After hearing Ella Fitzgerald's recording of "ICan't Face the Music" she began to include more modern improvisation influences: Sara Vaughan, Anita O'Day, Frank Sinatra and later Betty Carter, Cleo Laine, Karen Dalton, Laura Nyro and others.
After finishing at Chiswick County, Linda worked for a year at Hammersmith Hospital as a trainee Laboratory Technician, followed by a three-year teacher training course at Wall Hall College of Education, Hertfordshire.
Musical career
Through a boyfriend who was a student at Sussex University, Hoyle met the University of Sussex's US Jazz Trio – Lynton Naiff (keyboards), Foster (drums) and Nick Nicholas (double bass) – who asked her to sing with them at a nightclub on the Sussex coast. It was during this time that a flurry of interchangeable jazz-rock bands were playing at Sussex, culminating in a decision by Naiff, Foster and Grant Serpell to pursue playing professionally. Naiff, at the time enrolled to do a MSc in mathematics, dropped out of his course after a few months, renting a bungalow on the South Downs to organise the band. Mike Jopp was recruited as lead guitarist, and after considering male singers it was decided to take the risk of having a female front the band. Although in a previous incarnation the band had been known as "Ice", the name Affinity was chosen. Naiff, particularly, was a huge fan of Oscar Peterson, after whose 1961 album the name was chosen.
The shift of Linda's name from Hoile to Hoyle occurred early in her singing career. Journalists and interviewers invariably spelt it incorrectly as Hoyle, a much more common spelling.
The band quickly found work and their first live performance was in London at the Revolution on Bruton Street in 1968, which was managed by an insomniac businessman, Jim Carter-Fea, who also owned the Speakeasy and the Pheasantry in Chelsea. The Revolution was, in the late 1960s, a hot spot for celebrities. Affinity, over its many engagements there, had in their audience at various times Judy Garland, John Lennon and Stevie Wonder, the latter taking to the stage to play harmonica with the band.