Although the avant-garde behemoths Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor are widely credited with the creation of some of the most challenging if not disturbing sounds in the history of jazz, the heart-stopping tones produced by Abbey Lincoln, who has died aged 80, on Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite cannot be discounted. She did more than scream in the manner of a gospel singer in the grip of the lord. She graphically conjured up the sound of rape, the boot and the lash on a plantation in the Deep South in what remains one of the greatest ever protest records.

By the time Lincoln had recorded the album with her then husband, Roach in 1960, she had established herself as a singer of considerable reckoning through solo sets such as It’s Magic, That’s Him! And Abbey Is Blue. In fact, they are all fine records. They are real classics.

As she would consistently prove throughout her career, Lincoln, born in Chicago on 6 August 1930 and raised in Michigan, was an uncompromisingly individual vocal stylist whose spare, subtle implorations stood in marked contrast to the smoother effusions of Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald. There was a rich darkness in her delivery and phrasing that made her perhaps the most worthwhile successor to Billie Holiday. Although she worked with Roach and, much later, the British saxophonist Steve Williamson, Lincoln was not a glamour voice for hire and bravely followed her own path. More to the point, she established herself as one of the first jazz singers to write her own material. ‘The Music Is The Magic’ and ‘And It’s Supposed To Be Love’ are key entries in a canon of what might well be termed ‘alternative standards.’

Beyond her contribution to the art of jazz singing and song, Lincoln should be remembered first and foremost as an indefatigable political activist, the president of the Cultural Association For Women Of African Heritage and an outspoken critic of oppression and inequality the world over. Her influence on such as Steve Coleman, Cassandra Wilson, Cleveland Watkiss, Julie Dexter and others is immeasurable.

Kevin Le Gendre