Before there was Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Paige, there was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a black gospel and blues artist from the Mississippi Delta who, with her loyal Gibson SG, was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Regarded by many as the godmother of rock and roll, her extravagance, prowess and prowess on the newly electrified guitar influenced a number of very impressive English teenagers listening to American blues music.
Another black artist of the time was just as influential in creating popular folk music. Before there was Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Judy Collins, there was Odetta. Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1930, Odetta Holmes only appeared as Odetta. So in reality, before Cher, Madonna, Beyonce, and Jewell there was Odetta.
Ian Zack tells in “Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest” the life of one of America’s most important cultural figures in the last century. Odetta, he writes, had a voice like thunder. In the fall of 1952 at a hootenanny of young musicians in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles, when Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie first heard them sing “Take This Hammer,” the chain gang song first made famous by Lead Belly, they were and everyone else in the room was struck down by what they described as rumbling from heaven.
Zack based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 75 people, including family members, friends, fellow musicians, music business executives, promoters, managers, and technicians. He searched the archives of her press clippings, personal papers, interviews, and legal documents, and listened to her music for countless hours. This book is so interesting and well-written that many readers might feel nostalgic for the good old days they never grew up in.
Zack traces Odetta’s early life from Birmingham to Los Angeles, where she trained in classical voice as a teenager and performed in musical and theatrical ensembles during her school days. After graduating in 1949, she worked in simple professions, but continued to sing and act in summer workshops and in the theater. In 1951, Odetta traveled to San Francisco as part of a touring show where she found the folk scene and decided it was time to buy a guitar.
Odetta’s star rose rapidly in the 1950s. She played folk music in the nightclubs of San Francisco and New York City. She was tall, strongly built, and her voice mesmerized audiences and attracted mentors including singers Paul Robeson and Harry Belafonte. She worked part-time as a warehouse consultant and one night in 1952, she made a baffling query on her all-white motorhome cabin when she said, “Get some scissors. I want you to cut my hair. “Odetta was the first black woman in public to wear the natural hairstyle that would later become known as the Afro.
Zack believes the story of Odetta is the story of mid-20th century American politics with the convergence of McCarthyism, civil rights movement, and an emerging youth culture. Pete Seeger and his ethnic group, the Weavers, had recently gone out as communists, and the FBI, House Un-American Activities Committee, and other red baits were harassing the popular movement. These singers were scared and lay deep.
Odetta was the spark that helped spark the popular revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She sang ballads and prison songs with a passion and intensity that attracted a wide variety of young devotees – Baez, Dylan, Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary. She’s even influenced the emerging rock scene, with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and Ray Davis of the Kinks, and later Elvis Costello influenced by her musical talents.
No less important was their influence on the civil rights movement. Her artistry and songs about the freedom and plight of the oppressed, her regal demeanor on stage, and her expression of black pride have inspired activists and convinced many white middle-class Americans that the nation can no longer deny full citizenship rights to the black citizens of the nation. Zack finds much to admire on her lifelong search for freedom.
Zack covers the decade that Odetta was a star, selling out concerts in the US and overseas, appearing on television and in films, but she gradually faded from the picture by the mid-1960s. Zack seems almost remorseful to explain that Odetta never achieved much commercial success and that the public that once adored her so adored her turned to British invasion and electrified folk rock. She struggled professionally and personally for decades, plagued by her many insecurities, untapped opportunities and unfortunate decisions. However, late in life, she was honored with the National Medal in the Arts and Humanities by President Bill Clinton, and she switched career rejuvenating to the blues, which attracted new audiences and earned her a first Grammy nomination.
Odetta died in 2008, but her legacy is secured with those who were important to most fellow musicians and early civil rights activists. Zack movingly describes Odetta’s singing of the old gospel melody “This Little Light of Mine” in New York’s St. John the Divine Cathedral on New Year’s Eve. From 1983 to 1995 she sang a cappella from the pulpit every year. 10,000 people held lit candles and took part. Their voices rose to the vaulted ceilings of the churches. It was a transforming moment for those who were there because it had a simple but universal message of empowerment. But Zack believes that with all of her ups and downs in life, she sang it for both her salvation and the empowerment of her audience.
My wife has sung this song to our daughters and granddaughters countless times, and now I have a more meaningful appreciation for it and wish I could have been at this church with my family on one of those New Years Eve to hear Odetta sing. A better understanding of our nation’s rich cultural and musical heritage, what came before the present and why the times when you are a changin is the benefit of reading a good book like this.
Bob Funk is a retired US Marine and a retired school principal.
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