At 5:15 PM on December 2, 2008

We lost a great lady and an amazing soul. The singer, musician, and activist Odetta died yesterday evening at Lenox Hill hospital in New York City. She was 77. I didn't find out about it until this morning, when I opened my e mail and saw messages from several folks who knew her well, particularly her manager of 12 years, Doug Yeager. It was he, prompted by David Lander, a regular writer for American Legacy, who set up an interview with this grand dame of folk music, and made it possible for us to include her in the pages of our magazine.

I approached the telephone interview with excitement and a bit of trepidation—Odetta's gorgeous voice was a regular presence in our house when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. She had performed at the 1963 March on Washington, singing “Freedom Trilogy”; marched in 1965 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and some 25,000 others from Selma to Montgomery; and protested against the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War. The traditional black songs that she sang sparked a fire in more than one activist. She was an iconic figure in American musical history—in American history in general, and besides, my mother adored her and would have been upset if I didn't get it right. After a stumbling start, when Ms. Odetta chided me for questions that she thought were a waste of both our time—basic questions about her childhood, education, questions that I ask on almost all interviews to check the accuracy of existing biographies that are not always correct.

"That stuff is already out there," she said brusquely. She was right, it was. Mortified, I skipped over about four or five questions to something she did want to talk about. The present. The internet. Youtube. The future. Stuff like that. We wound up having a wonderful time.

To my great pleasure, some months later, I got to meet Odetta at a mini concert and reception that we threw to promote our second annual music issue. The featured performers were the Carolina Chocolate Drops, of whom I've written before. Being wheel-chair bound made no difference, Odetta bore herself like a queen in a sedan chair, sat front and center while the CCDs graciously entertained the room with a few of their great old-timey tunes. She beamed the entire time and the energy in the room was bright and golden, and made at least one of my friends cry with the beauty of it and the rest of us walk out a little lighter, a little better for having been there.

In a year of disasters and wonders, today I am just plain sad.

You can read the full article at Legacy's Web site.


Above: Odetta at the Forbes Galleries in NYC, with the Carolina Chocolate Drops (Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, and Dom Flemons), Rodney Reynolds, American Legacy's publisher, and me over there on the left tacking myself on like I'm somebody.

Photo credit: Barry Mason