Three years before her “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” transformed Pasolini’s masterpiece, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), Odetta, Dr.King’s “Queen of American folk music,” played Nancy Mannigoe in Faulkner’s (filmed) Sanctuary.
A live version earlier this year at a festival, where she had to be helped onto the stage. She had hoped to perform on the 20th of January in Washington. Odetta, march on.
“House of the Rising Sun” (2005)
(Also 2007 and this past August)
((And, finally, two months ago))
From Odetta Sings Dylan (1965)
Dylan on Odetta
“I found the local record store in the heart of Dinkytown. What I was looking for were folk music records and the first one I saw was Odetta on the Tradition label. I went into the listening booth to hear it. Odetta was great. I had never heard of her until then. She was a deep singer, powerful strumming and a hammering-on style of playing. I learned almost every song off the record right then and there, even borrowing the hammering-on style.”
—Chronicles, Part 1
Cf. Playboy, March 1978
You actually started out in Minnesota playing the electric guitar with a rock group, didn’t you?
Yeah. The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. That was in ’58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson.
What was so special to you about that Odetta record?
Just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record. It was her first and the songs were–Mule Skinner, Jack of Diamonds, Water Boy, Buked and Scorned.
[Photo by A Devereux]