RIP Odetta

Legendary African-American civil rights folk singer Odetta died yesterday at the age of 77, just weeks before she was to perform at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. Odetta started her singing career in the opera and musical theatre as a teenager in Los Angeles (cleaning houses with her mother to pay for classes), but made the move towards folksinging in 1950 after encountering the new American folk revival in San Francisco. She toured extensively across the country, bringing a sound of jazz and blues mixed with American folk revival and spiritualism to audiences from New York to Los Angeles and influencing artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Using her musical skills to give voice to the civil rights struggle, Odetta toured the country, marched on Washington, and met with Presidents of many administrations, including Bill Clinton who introduced her as the 1999 winner of the National Endowment for the Arts National Medal of Arts. When her health failed in recent years and her doctor forbid her from performing, she switched doctors and defiantly went on stage in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. We wish that Odetta could have lived to sing at the inauguration!