Word: odetta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After six years they have two children and nothing in common. Running across a Negro maid (Odetta) who worked in the brothel, the heroine hires her to look after the children and to remind her of the "sanctuary" of sin and pleasure that she loved so well. Then, without warning, the bootlegger reappears. The lovers get down to brass beds again, and she agrees to run away with him. The Negro maid begs her to think of the children and stay home. When she refuses, the maid smothers the younger child...
...maid mumbles something about saving the heroine from herself, but her principal function is obviously to rescue Faulkner from the moiling unmotivated mess of his plot. Actresses Remick and Odetta sometimes polarize the disorder with a powerful, paradoxical image of salvation: the black earth-mother hanged on a flimsy white flibbertigibbet. But on the whole, Producer Richard (son of Darryl) Zanuck's attempt to clean up Faulkner for the family seems a bit like trying to smear the whole of Yoknapatawpha County with underarm deodorant. It might just possibly be done, but it sure does seem a peculiar thing...
...chain-gang convict in Take This Hammer, a deserted lover in Lass from the Low Country. Her dark, handsomely pliant voice has none of the whisky rawness long idolized in such untutored folk singers as Lead Belly or Bessie Smith. But what she may lack in sheer, gutsy exuberance, Odetta more than makes up with immense power, a fine range, and an amazing command of nuances and inflections...
Breaking Rocks. Her voice was originally trained for opera. Born in Alabama, Odetta grew up in Los Angeles, picked up money for her voice lessons working in a button factory and as a maid. By the time she entered junior college she was a chorister in productions of Verdi's Requiem, Bach's B-Minor Mass. In those days, she recalls, "if it wasn't classical, I didn't want it." But one night at a party she heard a group of performers from a San Francisco nightspot sing folk songs until dawn, and promptly "fell...
...Campus. Booked for concerts for a season in advance and for a midwinter European tour, Odetta now lives in Chicago, tries to keep nightclub dates to a minimum and sing as often as possible on college campuses, where she feels most at home. She learns most of her songs from records, and alters and polishes them to suit her needs. Although she once scorned the trappings of the folk singer, including the inevitable guitar, she has added a bass accompaniment to her performances. "It's like a magic carpet," says Odetta. "It puts all of the baby...