Odetta

While search­ing for Christ­mas folk music recently on one of my usual sites, I came across an artist who was new to me. Not a new artist, you under­stand, just new to me. You will notice, if you read my posts as time goes on, that there is a lot of music out there that I missed the first time around. I’ve been work­ing to catch up!

Odetta was around before the folk music scene of the ’60s, yet I missed her while I was lis­ten­ing to Herman’s Her­mits, Les­ley Gore, The Kingston Trio and, later in the decade, Simon and Gar­funkel and Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival. I missed her in the ’70s and ’80s while lis­ten­ing to soft rock. And I missed her in the ’90s while I was belat­edly dis­cov­er­ing Bruce Spring­steen and Ste­vie Ray Vaughn.

Intrigued by online music clips, I ordered Odetta’s Christ­mas Spir­i­tu­als CD in time to lis­ten to it on a Thanks­giv­ing road trip to visit fam­ily. Her music was a won­der­ful sur­prise. She had a deep, dra­matic voice that could sing just about any­thing, and she recorded this par­tic­u­lar album with only a gui­tar and/or bass for accom­pa­ni­ment on each song.

I say “had” because, iron­i­cally, I dis­cov­ered Odetta only days before her death. I learned of her death tonight through a Time arti­cle that turned up on a Google search. The YouTube video of her singing “Mid­night Spe­cial” gives just a glimpse of her musi­cal career.

If you like blues or folk music and you haven’t yet lis­tened to this great tal­ent, you are in for a treat.