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Quick Facts
- NAME: Odetta
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Songwriter, Singer
- BIRTH DATE: December 31, 1930
- DEATH DATE: December 02, 2008
- EDUCATION: Belmont High School, Los Angeles City College
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Birmingham, Alabama
- PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
- Full Name: Odetta Holmes
Best Known For
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Play NowOdetta. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 02:08, May 22, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480.
Odetta. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480 [Accessed 22 May 2013].
"Odetta." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 22 2013, 02:08 http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480.
"Odetta," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480 [accessed May 22, 2013].
"Odetta," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480 (accessed May 22, 2013).
Odetta [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 22] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480.
Odetta, http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480 (last visited May 22, 2013).
Odetta. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/odetta-507480. Accessed May 22, 2013.
"I borrowed a guitar and learned three chords, and started to sing at parties." Later that year, she left the theater company and took a job singing at a San Francisco folk club. In 1953, she moved to New York City and soon became a fixture at Manhattan's famed Blue Angel nightclub. "As I did those songs, I could work on my hate and fury without being antisocial," she said. "Through those songs,
I learned things about the history of black people in this country that the historians in school had not been willing to tell us about or had lied about."
She recorded her first solo album, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, in 1956, and it became an instant classic in American folk music. Bob Dylan later cited that album as the record that first turned him on to folk music, and Time magazine raved about "the meticulous care with which she tried to recreate the feeling of her folk songs." Odetta quickly followed with two more highly acclaimed folk albums: At the Gate of Horn (1957) and My Eyes Have Seen (1959). In 1960, Odetta delivered a famed concert at Carnegie Hall and released a live recording of the performance.
The 1960s, however, were Odetta's most prolific years. During that decade, she lent her powerful voice to the cause of black equality—so often so that her music has frequently been called "the soundtrack of the civil rights movement." She performed at political rallies, demonstrations and benefits. In 1963, during the March on Washington, Odetta gave the most iconic performance of her life: Singing from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after an introduction by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Odetta also recorded more than a dozen albums during the 1960s, most notably Odetta and the Blues, One Grain of Sand, It's a Mighty World and Odetta Sings Dylan.
Later Career
Odetta's popularity waned after the 1960s, and she recorded only several more albums over the remaining four decades of her life. Her most prominent later works include Movin' It On (1987), Blues Everywhere I Go (1999) and Looking for a Home (2001). One of the greatest American folk singers of all time, Odetta has been cited as a prominent influence by such legendary musicians as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin. President Bill Clinton presented her with a National Medal of Arts in 1999. In 2004, she was made a Kennedy Center honoree and in 2005, the Library of Congress awarded her its Living Legend Award. Her highly acclaimed final album, a live recording performed when she was 74 years old, was entitled Gonna Let It Shine (2005). Her music inspired a generation of civil rights activists who helped tear down the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow to build a more equal and just United States of America. In her later years, after the popularity of folk music had declined, Odetta made it her mission to share its potency with a new generation of youth. "The folk repertoire is our inheritance. Don't have to like it, but we need to hear it," she said. "I love getting to schools and telling kids there's something else out there.
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View groupAfrican-Americans have a long history of activism in America, from fighting for the right to vote to pushing for integrated public spaces. Activists like Stokely Carmichael organized freedom rides, James Meredith fought to integrate blacks and whites at the University of Mississippi, and Rosa Parks instigated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. These protests were often legal and nonviolent, and made a powerful impact on civil rights in the United States. With the help of activists like these—and many others—the country slowly worked to acknowledge the basic rights and contributions of African-Americans. Activists outisde of the U.S. include Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who have fought against apartheid in South Africa. Learn more about the many black activists who fought against the odds in order to achieve equality.
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