Odetta: The Last Word

She inspired the 1950s folk music revival. In the 1960s her renditions of spirituals and blues formed the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. Hear why.

This career-spanning video interview, interspersed with performances and archival images, celebrates the singer Odetta, whose voice was the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. She recently died at 77.

This expanded video bio format is part of the New York Times "Last Word" series that interviews accomplished famous people with the understanding that the contents will be released posthumously. (Previous participants have included humorist Art Buchwald, philanthropist Stewart R. Mott, and Cambodian killing fields survivor & photojournalist Dith Pran.)

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 sang at the march on Washington, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, in August 1963. Her song that day was “O Freedom,” dating to slavery days.

“They were liberation songs,” she says in this video mini-biography. “You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life.”

Bob Dylan said in a 1978 interview, “The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.”

At a Carnegie Hall tribute to Bruce Springsteen, she turned one of his songs, “57 Channels,” into a chanted poem, and Springsteen came out from the wings to call it “the greatest version” of the song he had ever heard.

In 1999 President Bill Clinton awarded Odetta the National Endowment for the Arts Medal of the Arts and Humanities.

Reporter: Tim Weiner
Producer: Patrick Farrell
Executive Producer: Dave Rummel

Length: 19:50

VIEW: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20081203_odetta.html

SEE ALSO:

Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03odetta.html

Last Word: Dith Pran
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/last-word/dith-pran/1194820770784/index.html

Last Word: Art Buchwald
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/last-word/art-buchwald/1194820770698/index.html

Last Word: Stewart R. Mott
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/last-word/stewart-mott/1194822937246/index.html