Born in Alabama in 1930, she began her music career as one of the first woman folk artists of the fifties. Along with her new album, a must have is the "Odetta: Best of the Vanguard Years" collection, which includes a 1963 concert at Carnegie Hall with bassist Bill Lee (Spike's dad). She influenced such artists as Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, and even Bob Dylan, who said, "I learned all the songs on her first record word for word."

The Sixties witnessed Odetta as a major voice in America's Civil Rights Movement. She marched with Martin Luther King, and performed for President Kennedy on a nationally televised Civil Rights Program. She has appeared on stage and screen, appearing at Stratford, and in the 1960 film "Sanctuary" starring with Lee Remick and Yves Montand. She was the first recipient, in 1972,along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson of the "Duke Ellington Fellowship Award."

In 1975 she hosted the Montreux (Switzerland) Jazz Festival, and since then has starred at virtually every other major festival around the world. She has performed in plays by Toni Morrison, and has been a best friend of poet Maya Angelou for over fifty years. She was recently honoured by President Clinton on the Anniversary of her 50th year as an entertainer. She was quoted once as saying, "Music is outside the path we walk every day. Ever since primitive man we have been lifted by it, and we want to be lifted by it. Even though we're heading for Mars and a push-button world, we still have our basic emotions to deal with and that's where songs are coming from."

Odetta spoke to me by phone from her home in New York City.

DM: You have a very busy schedule this year.

ODETTA: (Laughing) Yes isn't that great. You sound like you are in a tunnel. I don't hear the crackling, which means I can concentrate on what your voice is saying. You're recording. Yes. Good, good, good, good.

DM: Douglas Yaeger (her manager) sent me a ten-page information sheet on your background and I must say you have an amazing life and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you.

ODETTA: May I say that that's a two way street. (I laugh) I really do. I really do admire the fact that there is someone here who wants to get into whatever we're going to get into. (She laughs)

DM: Thank you. I am a big fan of the Blues myself, and I really think that it is great the way it is becoming more appreciated these days.

ODETTA: It really is growing in audience isn't it.

DM: Years ago when you came out with your first Blues album in the early Sixties people were upset because you were moving away from the folk genre.

ODETTA: Those were our purest days. Ha ha. The people were pure. It had to be folk or it had to be blues. We didn't know back then. We weren't told by the people who researched the music, and they probably didn't recognize it either. You know this is a country the US of separation. We separate each other. I don't know if we do that of our own accord. We do that because industry does that. Puts one against the other. In order to pay lower wages for the other. Ok. And we didn't recognize back then that there was no way to put up a wall between one music and another. As people came into this country, we did not hang out with each other in our churches, our mosques or our synagogues, in our homes, hovels or out on the street. We didn't invite each other over to our own places, but the music. Each of us heard each other's music. And as we heard there is no way you can delete what you have heard out of your mind. Whether it be your parents scolding you. Ok a sidebar here. I wonder if you can remember things your parents told you and you thought it went in one ear and out the other ear. And then years later recalled what they said. (We both laugh) Well there was no way to separate music. Although that was the way we were thinking because that was the way of our earning a living, and the people we believed. So one thing has led into another. The cousins, the brothers and sisters, each of the music areas coming out of the United States. Unless it is a pure Appalachian song, or a pure Irish song with the fiddles and whatever, when they got here honey they got mixed up with stuff, as a matter of fact I was always curious as to an Englishman by the name of Child's. Child's ballads, he collected there and then he came over to Appalachia and he collected there similar songs. When you come from a country into another country you bring what you learned there in country A. You bring country A with you and then when you are chopping down the trees and building houses and do whatever else you are going to build you have other experiences. So you add and this is not a conscious thing. You add what your experience is to what you come out of and from. So the people's experience here, whether black or white or Mexican, now the originals here. they put there experience together and the music is the result of what their experiences have been. That is why the wide stroke of music that is coming out of United States, and I have a feeling that the rest of the world is absolutely fascinated with this cup of soup.

DM: This is your first album in fourteen years and you chose the Blues.

ODETTA: Because Mark Carpentieri at MC records came to us and he was interested in doing a blues record and that was right up my alley.

DM: Even in your folk there is blues.

ODETTA: Did you hear what I was saying to you in the last ten minutes. It isn't separated. All that folk stuff is a part of what the blues is.

DM: It is just what you lived.

ODETTA: No not what I lived. I am a historian, an observer; I have noticed things and that is all that I can claim.

DM: But you have not just been observing, you've been doing and I have noticed that you have been doing some great things as well. I have picked up your Village Vanguard release and your voice is amazing. And the songs with just you and Bill Lee's bass are special.

ODETTA: While we are talking I would like to just say here that one of the greatest teachers that I have ever had was Alberta Hunter. She was wonderful. As I was a youngster listening to old blues records I heard energy, and I thought you get that energy by yelling hollering and screaming. And if you compare those two records, the old blues record and this new one. I have not done this yet, but one of these days I would like to compare what I did when I was a younger one and what I did after I learned lessons from Alberta Hunter. This little wee biddy lady at the age of 84, as she was singing she didn't yell scream or holler. She just dug her little feet into the floor. And pushed up from the bottom, the diaphragm, and she focused, she told a story. And that's what I am working on. I started working on this record, and as Seth Farber (piano player, producer) and I go around I am working on trying not to over say anything, and keeping away from yelling screaming and hollering.

DM: While you do that beautifully.

ODETTA: Thank you

DM: Have you met Alberta Hunter.

ODETTA: I did meet her, but it was like she was a teacher, and I never did sit and talk with teachers. I thanked them and then sat off and listened. I did so appreciate her, and she was quite gracious to me also. But I mostly learned from watching her perform and listening to her perform.

DM: Your biography seems very linear. Were there times where you didn't perform? It looks like you have been on the road for fifty years doing your thing, and always had great audiences wherever you went. Were there hard times as well?

ODETTA: I have always performed. I have been able to earn my living via love of the music. I might have been 22 or 23 when I received unemployment checks for two weeks. Outside of that I have been able to earn my living

DM: Amazing

ODETTA: It truly is. You know the world's greatest voice could be walking around and trying to get someone to listen to them. It has an awful lot to do with luck and timing.

DM: Luck and timing, but you went out there and did it.

ODETTA: Well, you have to have a little something. (Laughs) Maybe not just a little something. Because I have heard an awful lot of people who ain't got nothing honey, and they project it, and there is somebody putting money in back of it. So, it's not a given.

DM: You have always seemed to stay true to your love, and what you wanted to do.

ODETTA: Fortunately I have been politicized by Paul Robeson, and Marian Anderson, and I have been politicized by the people around the area of folk music. I truly need to feel like I am useful. I know there are people who would like to disconnect what our living is from politics, but there is just no way you can do that. So I have been involved with being supportive of what I call righteous causes and that keeps my feet on the ground.

DM: When you are coming to Kingston, who is coming with you.

ODETTA: Seth Farber. There is one concert I am bringing my guitar, and I don't know if this is the one.

DM: You can bring your guitar. And if you need one we will find one for you.

ODETTA: Well thank you, I have been with Seth over a year now, and he is simply wonderful.

DM: What are some of the other things you will be doing this summer.

ODETTA: Our next thing is the Cambridge Festival in England, and the Knitting Factory in California

DM: There are many Odetta sites now on the Internet, is it possible to e-mail you directly.

ODETTA: Honey I have just mastered the touch tone phone.

DM: The Kingston Blues Festival is looking forward to having you.

ODETTA: Are you going to come up to me and say hi.

DM: Certainly, and one last question. If you could wave your magic wand and change anything in the world what would it be?

ODETTA: (Long pause) I think maybe I would wave the magic wand and take the meanness, the callousness, and the need to hurt, along with the area of greed. I think I would erase that out of the human person.

DM: I think the world would still survive if you did that, and it might be a better world.

ODETTA: That is the only way we are going to survive. We can't survive on war. We still have land mines and children are losing limbs, we are still having embargoes where children can't get medicine or food. Oh, please we can't survive on that.

DM: You have done so much for music breaking ground for women and women of color.

ODETTA: As an observer you see all that. But with a performer, or a writer, or a poet or an architect they're on to the next thing. They're not looking back. You are observing. And it would take you to make mention of what has come before and the stuff that they have done. I am not back there. I am wondering what I am going to do the day after tomorrow.

DM: Thank you very much, you are a beautiful person, and I look forward to seeing you at the Kingston Blues Fest.

ODETTA: It takes a beautiful person to know one, and I enjoyed talking to you too.

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