Odetta, 'Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,' Dies at 77

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 7:34 AM on December 3, 2008.

Odetta, influential folk singer and "voice of the civil rights movement," has died at age 77.

Odetta sang at coffeehouses and at Carnegie Hall, made highly influential recordings of blues and ballads, and became one of the most widely known folk-music artists of the 1950s and '60s. She was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin.

Her voice was an accompaniment to the black-and-white images of the freedom marchers who walked the roads of Alabama and Mississippi and the boulevards of Washington in the quest to end racial discrimination.

Rosa Parks, the woman who started the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Ala., was once asked which songs meant the most to her. She replied, "All of the songs Odetta sings."

...[Odetta] found her own voice by listening to blues, jazz and folk music from the African-American and Anglo-American traditions. She earned a music degree from Los Angeles City College. Her training in classical music and musical theater was "a nice exercise, but it had nothing to do with my life," she said.

"The folk songs were — the anger," she emphasized.

In a 2005 National Public Radio interview, she said: "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 through folk music."

Odetta marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and performed for President John F. Kennedy in 1963. She was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities by President Bill Clinton in 1999. She had hoped to perform at the inaugural for President Barack Obama in January.

"If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time."—Maya Angelou

Tagged as: civil rights, barack obama, bill clinton, odetta, 77, rev. dr. martin luther ki, president john f. kennedy

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.