Word: odetta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...During the folk boom, each Odetta gig, in coffeehouse or concert hall, was a master class of work songs, folk songs, church songs, and an eloquent tutorial in raw American history. Identifiable from the first syllable, her voice fused the thrill of gospel, the techniques of art song - the wisdom that subtlety sometimes trumps volume - and the desperate wail of blues. If a line could be drawn from Bessie Smith to Janis Joplin, from Mahalia Jackson to Maria Callas, it would have to go through Odetta...
...resonance was literal, political - few civil rights rallies of the early '60s were complete without an Odetta rendition of "We Shall Overcome" - and cultural. "The first thing that turned me on to folksinging was Odetta," Bob Dylan once said, and listening to that Tradition album helped persuade the young rocker to switch from electric to acoustic guitar. Odetta returned the favor in 1965, recording an LP of Dylan songs with an emphasis on the antiwar numbers rather than Dylan's sheaf of civil rights ballads...
...later years, Odetta collaborated on a dozen or more albums (dueting with Nanci Griffith, for instance, on Other Voices, Too). She recorded a collection of Christmas spirituals and did tribute albums to Ella Fitzgerald, Leadbelly and blues thrushes of the 1930s. In her 60s and 70s, she still could sing the hide off a traditional number. Evidence: this rendition of "Midnight Special" (see below...
...Odetta and many other survivors of the civil rights movement, the election of Barack Obama as President signaled a fulfilling chapter in the struggle. As she sank toward death in New York City, Odetta had an Obama poster taped on the wall across from her bed. Hospitalized with kidney failure on Monday, she kept willing herself to live because, her manager Doug Yeager wrote on a fansite just before her death, "Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama's Inauguration, and I believe that is the reason she is still alive...
...More about Odetta: Read a 1960 TIME profile of Odetta. Watch Odetta singing "Midnight Special...