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Odetta performed Saturday evening at the Palladium in St. Petersburg.
By GINA VIVINETTO
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 25, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Most music lovers know Odetta to be famous in the folk genre. The legendary 70-year-old singer was a fixture on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village during the 1960s. Bob Dylan says it was an Odetta album that made him swap his electric guitar for an acoustic.
So, it may have been a surprise to some to have Odetta perform as a guest of the Suncoast Blues Society, in a benefit for community radio station WMNF-FM 88.5.
But her fans -- and nearly 900 were at the sold-out show -- know that Odetta long ago dipped into the blues and has recently returned, lending her impeccable interpretations to classic songs.
Odetta has always been a fighter for the human spirit, social change and personal dignity. On Saturday she was introduced by James Tokley, poet laureate of Tampa, who read his rousing poem Odetta: An Ode to the Muse.
Odetta began by joining singer and Gulfport resident Pamela Clark-King on a duet of Dolphins by Fred Neil, the famed folksinger and St. Petersburg resident who died this month.
Wearing a head wrap and layers of ornate necklaces, Odetta spent almost two hours charming her fans with peerless renditions of songs by Leadbelly, Memphis Minnie, Sippie Wallace and Bessie Smith.
Odetta had no trouble getting the audience joyfully singing and clapping along to the traditional This Little Light of Mine. But it wasn't all feel-good fare; backed by the talented Seth Farber on piano, Odetta sang blues tunes from the 1920s and 1930s, hard-luck tales of folks with the usual woes: infidelity and heartbreak, but also homelessness and tuberculosis.
The notoriously outspoken singer shared stories, inspirational quotes and her vigilant views on current affairs, including her disapproval of "the appointed president."
But it's her singing that grabs your ear. Odetta's ranged is amazing. Her voice can be thick and supple, like molasses; it can growl from the gut or be as light as down. Odetta brings her narrators to life. She made every line of Smith's Backwater Blues authentic. Odetta's choking on the word "disgusted" made it singe into our ears.
She got the crowd singing along again on her finale, the blues standard Midnight Special, then brilliantly morphed it into This Little Light of Mine, creating a circle of the show, suggesting what comes around -- in this case joy -- goes around. It will return.
Opener Roy Book Binder was as enthralling. The St. Petersburg resident is a near-legend in the blues for his wry, woeful songs and finger-picking good guitar.