Singer whose traditional songs shook up America’s culture and politics
Odetta Holmes, known widely simply as Odetta, was a folk and blues singer whose impassioned and soulful music came to be intrinsically linked with both the civil rights movement and the folk revival of the 1960s.
She died, aged 77, on 2 December 2008, leaving behind a treasured musical legacy that had a huge influence across the musical spectrum and ushered in an epoch of change.
Born in Alabama on 31 December, 1930, Odetta escaped the oppression of the South at the age of seven and was fortunate to grow up in Los Angeles where she studied music, though the slave and prison songs of her birthplace had undoubtedly already had a huge impact on her.
She worked in musical theatre from her early teens and at 19 began touring the country as part of the cast of Finian's Rainbow. It was visits to San Francisco that introduced her to folk music and she soon left the theatre for the nightclubs of that city and New York.
There she would be a central influence on the likes of Bob Dylan, ...
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