Odetta died on Tuesday. Less than two months earlier, I saw her live in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco as part of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Even from her wheelchair, at 77 years old, I could hear and see what Pete Seeger had when she first came to New York City in 1953, and what had so meteorically-impacted an up-and-coming Bob Dylan. She told jokes, she told stories of Leadbelly’s rage at the racism he’d experienced even after his rise to relative-fame, and, always the most movingly, she belted a staggering array of folk-standards in a near-baritone meant for the ages.
On that October day in 2008, as she did on this live performance, released as At the Gate of Horn, in 1957, Odetta sang with a disquieting conviction and passion perfectly suited to the subject matter at hand.
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