Her Name is ODETTA

 UPDATE: This post was re-uploaded 09/01/2013. Enjoy, NØ.

A delayed post from earlier this month, no less poignant now...

On Dec. 2, the Queen of American folksingers, Odetta, died of heart failure just short of her 78th birthday.

Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930, in the depths of the Depression. The music of that time & place...particularly prison songs & work songs recorded in the fields of the Deep South...shaped her life.

Her discography is an aural history, centuries deep, of abduction, enslavement, social & sexual abuse by the whites in power...& of the determination first to outlive the ignominy branded on the race, then to overcome it. She marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. & performed for President John F. Kennedy. The one thing that death denied her was the chance to sing at President Obama's inauguration.

Odetta never started out to be a folk singer. She was operatically trained. She earned a music degree from Los Angeles City College. Her debut performance was in Finian's Rainbow, but while on the road with the show, she met a group of folkies in San Francisco. Their interest in traditional songs took her back to her own youth & the songs that had helped form her being.

Miss Rosa Parks was once asked which songs meant the most to her. She replied, “All of the songs Odetta sings.”

Bob Dylan said in a 1978 interview, “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.” He said he heard something “vital & personal”. He added, “I learned all the songs on her first record", songs like “Muleskinner Blues,” & “ ’Buked & Scorned.”

You can hear them here. Featuring Odetta on guitar & vocals, Bill Lee on bass.

Odetta - The Best of..., Everest / Tradition Records TR 2052, 1967.
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Side One -

Muleskinner Blues
If I Had a Ribbon Bow
Shame & Scandal
'Buked & Scorned
Joshua
He's Got the Whole World in His Hands

Side Two -

Glory, Glory
Lowlands
The Fox
Lass of the Low Countree
Devilish Mary
Take this Hammer


This is some mighty great musick, & if songs like "Devilish Mary" or "Take this Hammer" don't get you dancing, well, then you're dead, Jim.

Respect,
NØ




Odetta at Newport.