Odetta And The Blues

Performer: Odetta
Engineer: Ray Fowler
Producer: Orrin Keepnews
Distributor: Fantasy (distributor)

Notes: Personnel: Odetta (vocals); Herb Hall (clarinet); Buck Clayton (trumpet); Vic Dickenson (trombone); Dick Wellstood (piano); Ahmed Abdul-Malik (bass); "Shep" Shepherd (drums). Recorded at Plaza Sound Studios, New York, April 11-12, 1962. Originally released on Riverside (9417). Includes original liner notes by Ed Michel. Digitally remastered by Phil De Lancie (1991, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley California). Although Odetta's commercial breakthrough came from her affiliation with the collegiate folk revival of the late '50s and early '60s, the singer/guitarist spent the early '50s singing mostly blues in the early Bessie Smith/Ma Rainey style. Knowledge of this earlier period in Odetta's career puts 1962's wonderful ODETTA AND THE BLUES into context: no mere bandwagon-jumper she. Unlike the majority of her folk albums, which feature Odetta, her acoustic guitar and occasionally unobtrusive bass work by Bill Lee, ODETTA AND THE BLUES was recorded with a full band of the mid-'20s style: clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano, bass, and drums. The sextet knows their history--a drag like "Hard, Oh Lord" wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Kid Ory 78 in 1925--but aren't mere revivalists, kicking into standards like "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" with verve and passion. Odetta, as always, sings magnificently.

Taking inspiration from classic blues singers and folk troubadours of the 1930s and '40s and predating the folk boom of the '60s, Odetta remains one of the most important yet often overlooked artists of the American musical tradition. Her unique, politically charged fusion of blues, traditional Negro spirituals, and American folk songs was a profound influence on a generation of artists from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Tracy Chapman. Odetta continued to perform well after her heyday, remaining both fiercely political and artistically engaging.

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