Odetta Holmes, known to most as simply Odetta, was born in Birmingham, AL on December 31st 1930. Her music carried titles such as American folk, Blues, Spiritual, and later Jazz. She grew up in L.A. and attended L.A.’s city college to study music. Her career lasted more than 60 years and gave us more than 30 albums. In her later years, she received many acknowledgements including the one from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He named her “The Queen of American Folk Music”. And on September 29, 1999 President Bill Clinton presented her with the National Endowment for the Arts National Medal of Arts. She also appeared in four films, one of them being The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. She had hoped to sing at the inauguration of Barack Obama but God had other plans. She took her final bow at a performance on October 25th of this year in Toronto and on December 2nd 2008 she died of heart disease. Her body is no longer but her music lives on. Ms. Maya Angelou once said “If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time”.
