Odetta, RIP

Odetta, the classically trained folk, blues and gospel singer who used her powerfully rich and dusky voice to champion African American music and civil rights issues for more than half a century starting in the folk revival of the 1950s, has died. She was 77.

She was admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City for a checkup in mid-November but went into kidney failure. She died there Tuesday of heart disease, her manager, Doug Yeager, told the Associated Press.

With a repertoire that included 19th century slave songs and spirituals as well as the topical ballads of such 20th century folk icons as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, Odetta became one of the most beloved figures in folk music.

She was said to have influenced the emergence of artists as varied as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Tracy Chapman.

“The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta,” Dylan once said. [Los Angeles Times]

RIP Odetta. Check out some videos, including from recent NYC shows, below…

Odetta playing at Newport festival

Odetta @ Governor’s Island in 2007 – House of the Rising Sun

On 7/7/07 in her 77th year, folk blues legend Odetta performed a free hour and a half set at Governors Island, NYC, kicking off the Folks on the Island four concert series sponsored by Trinity Church of Wall Street. The house in New Orleans is probably a high rise luxury condo now with more expensive whores and designer blue jeans but Odetta brings us
back to before the flood, and before this song was a hit for the Animals. Long before Janis Joplin was singing Down on Me, there was Odetta in 1959 recording it on vinyl for Janis to take it from
. There was Odetta soulfully growling Poor Little Jesus and singing Masters of War with force and conviction even beyond Dylan’s. “When I was a young girl” is another folk classic I first
heard on the LP Folksy Nina (Simone) . Every 60’s folk singer owes a debt to Odetta. Thanks for concert. It was great seeing you.

Odetta Live in concert 2005, “House of the Rising Sun”

Odetta Gordon sings God’s Gonna Cut You Down