RIP Odetta
I just learned via American Digest that the folksinger Odetta has died at the age of seventy-seven.
In my youth, I saw her perform at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village. Since that was quite some time ago, I suppose it was also (relatively speaking) in Odetta’s youth. I also saw her perform just a few years ago, and she was still a powerhouse.
When she was young, she was one of the first African-Americans (Negroes, at that time) to sport short, natural, unstraightened hair. It was part of her proud presentation as a black woman of force and stature.
And stature Odetta had, in abundance: she was a big woman. I’m not sure how tall she actually was, but on stage she seemed a giant. In later life she had lost a great deal of weight, and I was surprised that she appeared rather diminutive the last time I saw her perform.
But she was never diminutive as a stage presence, even then. That voice! The Times obituary doesn’t really describe it, so I will. I first heard Odetta on a record, and for a moment I thought she was a man because of the extraordinary power and depth of her voice. But then it rose high and wailing, and it was clear her feminine name was not a fluke: she was a woman, after all.
But it was in her booming, resonant, vibrating lower (how low can you go?) registers that she shone. And rumbled. She could crack that voice like a whip, too, when necessary. Here are two short videos of Odetta in her prime—and what a prime it was:
The next one is very recent, within the last year and a half. In it you’ll see a demonstration of soul clapping its hands and louder singing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
RIP, Odetta.
I met odetta in a small meeting for a womans group in the music industry… it was a small room, maybe 15 people… and she was sparkling…
she sang four pieces… and talked… and since i was connected, she spend about 45 mins with me… me sitting on her lap and play flirting… (silly crap).
she signed my artwork… gave me her personal card… (with not for publication on the back).
i saw her again about 2 years ago… just in passing… no time to talk….
i kept thinking of her and whether i should call and or send a card… i should have from day one..
but i can say the same thing about many people like this i have crossed paths with…
though it was really sad… i still remember that evening of special music for the few of us… and the play flirting and fun…
i will miss her….
What a voice. Listening to that final video literally sent chills down my spine. Thanks for posting this, neoneo.
Oh did she have a voice! , IMHO, once she did a song, Odetta’s version of it became the Approved Version. With many singers, I associated their singing with just a voice, but with Odetta, I associated her singing with a person in her entirety.
I heard her records four plus decades ago, and can still hear her in my mind. Her voice was that powerful.
in a small room that held one couch, two seats, a piano, and a love seat…
she put the frisson up and down my spine… 🙂
and her personality was real and earthy…
(not like so many of the entertainers and people i meet when i am doing the photography thing)
Extra applause for working in Yeats.
I’m a musician, and I can certainly appreciate Odetta’s work.
As time progressed, she became a locked in the 60s diehard who completely failed to notice that it was no longer 1965.
I’m sorry, but for the last two decades she’s been the Jesse Jackson of the music work. She couldn’t stop bitching at whites.
That stuff really got tired. I stopped listening to her. She should be remembered for her political contribution. As an artist… well, I can do without her.
I can’t leave that churly unkindness as the last comment.
When Barbara Jordan died in 1996, I produced a memorial concert for her at the Kennedy Center. Odetta flew in from Europe to sing — at her own expense. (I don’t think we even bought her dinner, but I did give her a pair of earrings from my brother’s store.)
She sang “Black Woman” a capella, and just filled the place with beauty. But what I treasure is the memory of the moment just before…
The most intimidating person at the event was the Center’s stage manager (I organized it, invited everybody,talked ’em into appearing for free and made sure they all got to the stage — but once they got there, that woman was BOSS), and I recall how Odetta, waiting to go on, was just standing there, her arms to her sides, meditating. The stage manager touched her gently to show her how to enter and — ham that she was — Odetta jumped back dramatically at the uninvited gesture: that was the end of THAT attempt to stage manage her. It still makes me smile.
I don’t care if she didn’t live up to what Shouting wanted of her, or anybody else: she sang with her soul driving that awesome voice, and she never backed down from using it for what she believed.
She’s been allowed to lay her burden down, and God rest her for how well she carried it.
I find it interesting that a number of posters here had some personal contact with Odetta.
Jimmy Witherspoon, the blues singer, called Odetta the `great folk singer – the greatest of folk singers’, and he was right.
In spite of my knowledge of the 1960s and the civil rights movement, I’d never heard of Odetta until I received as a gift a cd called `American Folk Anthology’, and I immediately fell in love with that VOICE.
Last summer, Odetta actually came to a folk festival in my hometown, Ottawa. I was going to go, but balked at the $100+ ticket prices.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to see her…
another thing i remembered from that night..
it was somthing that changed my life, and made my doing things so much easier. fancy that. its i think the only time i met someone for such a short time and was affected positively and directly by a piece of honest truth when she could have easily said the expected.
i remember after she sang… we were all sitting around… i was trying to draw her in my pad, which is why a while later she came to talk and was introduced to me, and we went over to the chair and sat down, where she signed my work..
but before that everyone was talking and a woman, i dont remember who, asked her one of those hammy questions that diehard fans and those in awe sometimes ask. i have to paraphrase.
what does it feel like to be someone that through their work has influenced so much music, and through that so many lives, and for women, and in politics, does it feel special?
a typical lefty kind of question…
i remember her laughing at the question. i was on the floor, the woman was twisted backwards on the beige couch to ask, and odetta was standing behind the couch with the black baby grand behind her.
she chuckled… i dont remember if she said honey, but it fits as she used a kind of souther etiquette to put people where she wanted them without actually saying things (like “surely your joking”, “dont make a spectical of yourself”, etc).
anyway… she said something that i remember as honey, if you think that your going to feel different when youve made it, i have to disappoint you. you always feel like you, its everyone else that starts to treat you nice and want you to be with them. but you never feel anything but being you.
that very problem is why my fathers painting never went anywhere even though galleries wanted his work badly… he was always waiting to feel something. some validation…
for me, i was always acheiving, but since i never felt anything, i never thought that the big things i had already done meant anything, and long ago was kind of slacking in what i could do but didnt do.
when i was in my young teens i had won science contests, been on sports teams, was part of a youth orchestra with the schools that performed at lincoln center (avery fischer hall. my cousin had his solo concert at alice tully hall. i am half deaf and was first string and a soloist). did oils and other art, but other than others liking the work, i never felt much. (talent can make too easy what others kill and work hard to be like).
so when i came to the thing my freind invited me to that night… i had already had lost everything. my crazed ex years before faked her death, so that and other lunatic games drove me to banruptcy. i had just lost my home, and a friend loaned me enough money to move into the city, and i just got some work and was paying them back as fast as i can.
i ended up once again getting connected to another part of the world as my family drifts in and out of it it seems… and was doing some supervising work for the grammy committee (volunteer)…
after she said that though.. i went back home… ended up a short while later got a job with some kick ass bucks in it… and picked up a nikon f5 figuring i wont need to buy a new 35 mm ever again. nice lenses…
and i went out into the world again… i no longer was worried about doing stuff and not feeling something so that i know i was going the right way…
i ended up in short while being signed to a top agency for celeb pictures, and i drift in and out of top a list parties, and other things… stuff has been published all over the world, and have met interesting people…
and when people ask me how i did it… she made me realize just go out and do it. if your not going to go to jail for trying, then go out and do it.
now no one believes my stories… i also do artwork… published articles (robert anton wilsons work appeared next to mine – so that was interesting)…
i am now working with a geneticist at a research hospital designing new medical related technology.. (i also work there doing boring stuff too).
but, odetta made a big difference… a difference in attitude… something thats importance is hard to pin down…
i also owe my dad a lot for the skills in art since he is a really great real born artist… he tought me how not to hold on to lifes rails and let go. Mom was keen on books and more social stuff…
perserverence was my own.. and all of that made me the modern kind of rennaisance guy i am…
but it was odetta that got me to stop looking inside to my own feelings to know something that one cant know from the inside looking out… so i stopped worrying about creating so many things and pieces, and other projects and not having them go anywhere…
was i really creating them for approval? or to get someplace? did i need that feeling that i would never have?
she said you are you and you live your life and it is what it is… nothing more nothing less…
pink floyd said it too…
all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
so i went out and started touching for thats where the feeling was… 🙂
i should have written this up and done this story as a memorial.
heres to friends family and heroes…