Before there was Bob Dylan, the folk revival icon, there was Odetta. Before there was Janis Joplin, the wailing blues singer, there was Odetta. The woman whom Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Queen of American Folk Music” inspired countless artists both during her reign and in the decades that followed. The American folk, blues, jazz, and spiritual singer was as influential musically as she was politically and socially, contributing her talents, time, and energy to such historical events as the March on Washington in 1963.
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While we might associate Odetta most closely with the 1960s, her career continued well into the late 2000s. Odetta performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco on October 4, 2008, followed by a set in Toronto on October 25. She had hoped to perform at former President Barack Obama’s first inauguration ceremony in January 2009. Tragically, the civil rights icon died of heart disease the previous month on December 2, 2008.
Odetta left behind a truly incomparable musical, cultural, and sociopolitical legacy. The New York Times described Odetta as “the singer whose resonant voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement.” The obituary later read, “Odetta’s 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 to end racial discrimination.”
Odetta Was a Major Influence in Both the Musical and Sociopolitical Worlds
As the oft-described “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” Odetta was a powerful influence on musicians and non-musicians alike. Martin Luther King Jr. was the most notable figure to call Odetta the “Queen of American Folk Music.” Other civil rights icons, like Rosa Parks, agreed. When asked which songs meant the most to her, Parks once said, “All of the songs Odetta sings,” per the New York Times. Outside of the sociopolitical realm, Odetta was also a tremendous influence on musical artists like Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Joan Baez.
In a Hit Parader interview from 1969, Joplin recalled finding her distinct voice through Odetta. “I began listening to blues and folk music,” Joplin said of her early days of music discovery. “I bought Bessie Smith and Odetta records, and one night, I was at this party, and I did an imitation of Odetta. I’d never sung before, and I came out with this huge voice.”
Dylan credited Odetta for being the driving force behind his interest in folk singing, saying he found something incredibly “vital and personal” in her first album, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues. “I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. That was in ‘58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. I learned all the songs on that record,” Dylan said in a 1978 Playboy interview.
Odetta died at 77 years old, just under six decades after bursting onto and indelibly changing the musical scene forever.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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