Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77

Something like this is just bound to make a body sad. Another civil rights pioneer that won’t live to see Barack Obama sworn in.

I was only fleetingly familiar with Odetta; she had one of those kind of “Holy crap, is that a woman singing?” voices, like Nina Simone. A stop-you-in-your-tracks-and-make-you-take-notice voice. When she sang a thing, you believed it. You know damn well she believed it.

I’m not familiar enough with her body of work or her legacy to do them proper justice. This New York Times piece does a better job in a few paragraphs than I could do if I pounded hell out of my keyboard all night.

The only thing that the Times piece leaves out that I would like noted is that Johnny Cash was a fan, too, and had her on his TV show on August 30, 1969. This is how I’ll always remember her:



Although her light has been extinguished, her after-image is seared into our national conscience. Like Leonard Cohen, Sinead O’Connor and Bobby Dylan, someday I’ll be able to tell my son that for a few brief years, he shared the earth with a giant, the likes of whom we’ll not soon see again.

Rest easy, Odetta. You’ve reached the mountaintop that Dr. King spoke of and your faith promised you. I have to believe that the view from where you are now is better than it is from here.