Odetta
A Life in Music and Protest
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
An AudioFile Best Audiobook of 2020
The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” who combatted racism and prejudice through her music.
Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some of the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change.
A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus.
But Odetta’s importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her “Freedom Trilogy” songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere.
Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.
Listen to the author’s top five Odetta hits while you read:
1. Spiritual Trilogy (Oh Freedom/Come and Go with Me/I’m On My Way)
2. I’ve Been Driving on Bald Mountain/Water Boy
3. Take This Hammer
4. The Gallows Pole
5. Muleskinner Blues
Access the playlist here: https://spoti.fi/3c2HnF4
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zack (Say No to the Devil) celebrates the life of guitarist-vocalist-lyricist Odetta Holmes (1930 2008) in this fascinating first full-length biography of the musician. Odetta blended jazz, blues, country, and folk and influenced generations of musicians, including Joan Baez, Miley Cyrus, Bob Dylan, and Rhiannon Giddens. "Her soaring vocals and preternatural ability to inhabit the characters she sang about left her predominantly white audiences spellbound," Zack writes. He traces Odetta's life from her birthplace in Birmingham, Ala., to Los Angeles, where she received opera lessons at 13 and performed in musical and theatrical ensembles. By the mid-1950s, she was performing folk music in San Francisco and New York City nightclubs. Zack provides a complete discography of her seminal recordings, which includes Odetta Sings Ballads and Odetta at the Gate of Horn. Throughout this expertly researched biography, Zack shares testimonies of friends and fellow musicians, including Harry Belafonte: "the people who heard her became deeply committed to a force and something that she brought to the table that was so artful." A political activist, Odetta performed at the 1963 March on Washington, after which she would earn the moniker "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." Odetta fans will delight in this timely biography.