Odetta!
I happened to be driving down to Portland yesterday evening just as an amazing show was getting going on KEXP: “Martin Luther King and the Songs of Freedom - How Gospel Music Inspired a Movement.” I listened until, somewhere south of Tacoma, and sometime after The Death of Emmett Till, the signal fizzled out.
My God. Someone give Greg Vandy a raise. Right now. The show isn’t up in podcast format or available for audio streaming yet (as far as I can tell) but as soon as it’s available online it’s your duty as an American to listen.
And can I just say again how much I love Odetta. Maybe this reveals me to be a music naif, but I’d never heard of her until I watched that Bob Dylan documentary on PBS a few months ago. In the documentary she was slapping her guitar with a thick, flat hand and letting out a primal wail in which one could hear the entire spectrum of anger and sadness that folk musicians like Dylan would later try to pick off in manageable chunks. Vandy played Odetta’s version of The Times They Are A-Changin and I felt like that thick hand was grabbing a fistful of my shirt and pulling me right in front of Odetta’s face so she could tell me how the song was supposed to be sung. It was one of those moments when all you can do is curse, it’s so good.
(A note to the gay boys: Odetta was fierce before fierce was fey.) ((And speaking of divas.))
KEXP: I demand a rebroadcast!
Maybe it's in their hourly archive. What time was it on?