Like Kurt Cobain turning me on to The Vaselines and The Raincoats as an impressionable middle-schooler, Bob Dylan preached and evangelized the glory of Odetta to my formative ears when first I started college in early 2000. With the Berkeley Public Library on my side (boasting three, count ‘em, three! different Odetta titles in their CD catalog), I dove headfirst into real folk. Spring-boarding from Odetta, I discovered Pete Seeger (and his two groups, The Weavers and the Almanac Singers), Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Hamilton Camp, etc., etc. and, as I had known when I heard my first Delta Blues artists, I knew I was really onto something.
Yet, no matter how much I dig into Traditional Folk, the Folk Revival, Contemporary Folk, Anti-Folk, whatever Folk, no time is quite like my first time: Odetta’s 1956 debut, Sings Ballads and Blues. 16 songs of unmitigated humanity at its absolute best.
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It sucks songs only get to play :30 but her intensity is immediate - she sings with such conviction which it seems can easily become diluted in the singing of a folk song. I wondered about that little “twill” she put on a word here and there - is that a signature trait or did she pick it up from an earlier artist?