Odetta (1930-2008) was a folk icon whose songs were the soundtrack of the protest movement of the 50s and 60s. She influenced a generation of musicians then and now.
Odetta (1930-2008) was a folk icon whose songs were the soundtrack of the protest movement of the 50s and 60s. She influenced a generation of musicians then and now.
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Today we’re highlighting the story of a folk icon whose songs were the soundtrack of the protest movement of the 50s and 60s. She influenced a generation of musicians then and now her music informs the way some artists interpret our political present. Please welcome Odetta.
Odetta was born Odetta Holmes on New Year’s Eve, 1930, in Birmingham Alabama. In those early years, on Saturday mornings she and her family would listen to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on the radio. Her father, Reuben, passed away when Odetta was young. And when she was seven, she and her mother Flora moved to Los Angeles. It was there that Odetta pursued her musical opportunities. A teacher told her she had a good voice, and so she started listening to blues, jazz, and folk music.
She earned a degree in music from Los Angeles City College. Though she was trained in classical music and theater, she would later say in a New York Times interview that all that was just an exercise: “It had nothing to do with my life,” she said. “The folk songs were the anger.”
Odetta picked up a guitar for the first time when she was 19. She had been hired to sing professionally in the West Coast production of “Finian’s Rainbow”. After the show she and other musicians would head to coffee shops to spend the night drinking, and singing. “I think we were the last of the bohemians,” she later said in an interview with the Times. In 1953 Odetta moved to New York City and began performing in clubs.
Odetta was particularly shaped by prison songs and work songs she heard in her childhood. “They were liberation songs,” she said in the interview with The Times. She added: “You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.”
Odetta had a special way of bringing old songs to life. She would perform them, as if trying to bring the audience into the environment – percussively hitting her guitar to mimic the bang of a convict’s sledgehammer, for example. Her first album, “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues” was released in 1956. Bob Dylan later said he listened to every song on that record, and that “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.”
Odetta was also a force in the world of politics. In the 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare, she would perform for groups accused of being communist. And then, in the 1960s, Odetta’s music led her to get involved in the civil rights movement. In 1963 she marched with Rev. Martin Luther King in the March on Washington and sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the gathered crowd. Her fame was at its highest around this time. When Rosa Parks was once asked which songs meant the most to her she replied “All of the songs Odetta sings,” she replied
Odetta’s influence was often overlooked and she did not get the same recognition as other, often white, male, folk singers – whom she influenced and often performed alongside. However she continued to have a vibrant career that spanned nearly 60 years, full of awards, In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton presented her with the National Medal of Arts. And in 2003, the Library of Congress gave her a Living Legends tribute. And today, Odetta’s contributions to American folk music are being reinterpreted by a new wave of Americana artists.
She passed away on a Tuesday in Manhattan in December, 2008. She was 77.