Odetta

Odetta

Odetta, a singer of folk, blues, jazz and spirituals whose powerful, deep voice helped spark the flames of social justice and freedom during the height of the civil rights movement, has died.  The artist, who helped keep the light of folk music burning brightly for more than half a century, succumbed to heart disease on Dec. 2, less than a month short of her 78th birthday and less than 50 days shy of the inauguration of President Barack Obama at which she had hoped to sing.

Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama during the throes of the Depression, her life was shaped to a large extent by the music she heard during her early childhood years in the deep South — what she referred to as” liberation songs” during a videotaped interview with The New York Times last year.  Having discovered as a child that she could sing, Odetta earned a degree in music from Los Angeles City College.  (She and her mother had moved to LA when Odetta was young, shortly after her father died).  Although trained in classical music and musical theater, she found her true voice in folk music.

“School taught me how to count and taught me how to put a sentence together.  But as far as the human spirit goes, I learned [that] through folk music,” Odetta told an interviewer for National Public Radio several years ago. However, years earlier, in an interview with The Washington Post, she maintained, “I’m not a real folksinger.  I don’t mind people calling me that, but I’m a musical historian…  With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, and propagandizing.”

Although she launched her professional singing career by appearing in a West Coast production of “Finian’s Rainbow” in 1950, Odetta felt much more comfortable playing guitar and singing ballads, blues and spirituals in nightclubs and coffeehouses – the very songs that led to her active involvement in the civil rights movement and her crowning moments in 1963 when she marched in Selma, Alabama with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and later sang “O Freedom” during the August 1963 March on Washington.  Odetta’s booming voice helped to provide the soundtrack for the movement. 

Her fame, like the civil rights movement itself, waned for years following the assassination of Dr. King in 1968.  However, Odetta carried on and was still recording albums and performing publicly until recently.  A 2005 release entitled Gonna Let It Shine was nominated for a Grammy Award, as was Blues Everywhere I Go in 1999.  Despite her failing health, Odetta had performed some 60 concerts over the past two years.   Her last major performance was before thousands during a festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Oct. 4.  She was admitted to New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital with kidney failure last month.  It is there that she died yesterday. 

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Odetta was an inspiration to others – including Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and Bob Dylan. “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta,” Dylan told a writer for Playboy 30 years ago.

Luminaries from the folk music world joined in honoring Odetta during a special lifetime tribute and concert presented by the World Folk Music Association in March 2007.  Filmed highlights of Odetta’s life and career were also screened at the time, along with a clip from the movie “Hairspray,” in which Pia Zadora and her friends want to be like Odetta.  In previous years, Odetta had received a “Living Legend” tribute from the Library of Congress and the Kennedy Center Visionary Award, while former President Bill Clinton awarded her the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities.