TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• "Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77"
• Q&A with Odetta
• Odetta on MC Records
• Jazz Foundation of America

E-mail a friend

In her last television appearance, Odetta performs. (2:25)
 

Full interview. (21:47)
 

Tavis: In January of this year, singing legend and civil rights icon Odetta paid us a visit for what would be her last televised conversation. Even at age 77, Odetta was still recording and performing. In 2007, she received a Grammy nomination for her CD "Gonna Let it Shine." I began our conversation by asking her how the world came to know her simply as Odetta.

Odetta: Way back as I was growing up, in this country, if your name wasn't Jones or Smith, if it was a complicated name like from Croatia, they would change it in some kind of way, right? So my maiden name was Felious - it was Odetta Felious, and, at the Tin Angel when I was being hired, Peggy Tolk-Watkins said, "Nobody will ever be able to say that," so she said, "Why don't you just go with Odetta?" I thought it was pretty uppity, but I loved the idea.

Tavis: So you were there long before Madonna and Beyoncé - there was Odetta.

Odetta: Not before - was it Liberace? Oh, there was a woman with one name. Hildegard, yes, yes.

Tavis: It is a blessing, though, that you are still here after all these years and still performing and being Grammy-nominated and apparently still loving to perform.

Odetta: I love to perform. It has been the music, folk music, that has informed me, educated me, got me to feeling good and better about myself, and I have a need to propagandize and to continue putting out the stories of how strong a group of people we came from, how we got over, under, through in spite of all the feet that were holding us down. So I'm a propagandist, really.

Tavis: Unapologetically.

Odetta: (Laughter) Unapologetically, yes.

 

Tavis: Why so, though? Why play that role? Why a propagandist, unapologetically?

Odetta: I think it chose me. I was studying voice and I still love the classical music area, but then when I started hearing folk music, the songs had to do with what I felt, so I really just went into it as a hobby. And the timing was perfect because the music industry was then putting a spotlight on folk music.

This was also the time as individuals in different parts of the country were working towards improving their lives in our community. It was the beginning of bringing together the civil rights movement, and fortunately we had Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King that we believed in because most folks, you know, following Dr. King didn't believe in turning the other cheek - now you know that. (Laughter)

Tavis: Absolutely.

Odetta: But we decided we'd try that and back that. He also got rid of the myth that we couldn't stand together. By the way, I saw you when you were in Washington, D.C. and you were bringing people together, and I was so pleased and proud of you. I do thank you for that.

Tavis: Oh, you're kind to say that, thank you. You said a few things here I want to go back and kind of unpack a little bit - at least give you a chance to unpack. In no particular order, number one, it is so popular nowadays to revel in the humanity of Dr. King. We have a holiday that we celebrated earlier this week to honor him, the first African American to be so honored in this country.

So it's easy now to look at King in retrospect with loving eyes. But to your earlier point, and I want your take on this, here was a man who at 26, even - 26, 27 - 26 when he starts to lead the Montgomery bus boycott in Montgomery, as you know.

At 26, he is preaching this message of nonviolence, to your point, at a time when Black folk are being lynched - being lynched, being murdered, otherwise maimed; dogs, water hoses - run the list of all the maltreatment that you could put on a people, and here's a guy preaching a message of nonviolence. There are a lot of folk who bought into it and a lot of folk who didn't buy into that. But for whatever reason, you did - so much so that you worked with him and won a Grammy with him for work you did together.

But what was it about his message that resonated with you, that message of nonviolence, with all that ugliness that was going on around this message of turning the other cheek?

Odetta: Since we didn't have the equipment, gun for gun, what other way were we going to try? We could either get to the fork in the road, lie down, and just let them step on us, or start walking straight through it. And I think that it was his charisma that gave us the strength to do it because of course we were frightened.

I remember one story where people were handing out leaflets and this old lady came up to this young man and she put her purse back to hit him. He said, "Now listen, lady, I don't believe in nonviolence. You hit me and I'll hit you back." (Laughter)

Tavis: I am not a pacifist, yeah. (Laughter)

Odetta: And then to have lived at the time when I saw and witnessed the strength that we have, the just sheer determination, and without him, it would not have happened. And I do know that there were a lot of people who objected too, but as we objected, we had no other plan to get past some of this stuff.

Tavis: Tell me about your - I can read about him in history; I was too young to meet him - I was born too late to ever meet him, but I have read everything I think ever written about Dr. King. As everybody knows, I think he's the greatest American we've ever produced. I say it all the time. That said, I'm always fascinated by peoples' personal friendships with him, those I get a chance to talk to who spent time with him. Tell me about your personal friendship with Dr. King.

Odetta: As I was growing up, I was a very shy little girl and young woman.

Tavis: Growing up where?

Odetta: In Los Angeles.

Tavis: In Los Angeles, right here.

Odetta: Uh-huh, and -

Tavis: But born in Alabama, though, right?

Odetta: Born in Alabama. Then we came out here when I was six. I was around him, but there was never an exchange. He was taking care of the nation and big stuff. I was there to be of support. I was sitting at the feet of and looking in the mouth of and listening to, so I didn't really know him. Nor did I know Paul Robeson. I just sat at the feet of and took the energies that they were willing to give.

Tavis: But for him to have had such regard for you, to refer to you as the queen of American folk music, had to make your heart smile.

Odetta: I think he was pleased that there was a young woman who was singing of our lives and our history through the music and through the stories. I think he was pleased.

Tavis: For one who might just drop out of the sky from another place and not know what this thing called folk music is, how would you describe to this creature from another planet what folk music is? What is it you do?

Odetta: Let's say that we're working all day. Let's say that we're cutting sugar cane, and one of the ways to keep rhythm was the singing. Let's say we were building a railroad or cracking up rocks as they used us for poor, unpaid labor, keeping pace. Let's say a baby was crying and sick and you were singing to it. Let's say that you were worried about your food.

There's one phrase, "I feel superstitious, woman, about my hog and my bread, a superstitious feeling that it won't have something to eat." It is within the music of folk music that we have the history of people as they lived. Through the spirituals, we have the history of us as celebrating.

If you'll notice, at Christmastime - we did an album once of Christmas spirituals? Well, it's joy - joy, joy, and joy that we use to celebrate. Usually Christmas music is kind of - but the music is reflecting what our lives were and what we were doing and what we did to accompany ourselves or what we did to soothe the frustration.

So I think when the civil rights movement came along, the music was there already because we had been addressing our lives and then the civil rights movement comes on and here we are - we shall overcome. It's just the way it came together.

Tavis: I would assume, then - you correct me if I'm wrong - I would assume, then, for all the different parts there are to a beautiful song, an empowering song, a moving song, for all the parts that there is to that song, I would assume, given what you just said, that the most powerful part for you is the lyric?

Odetta: Absolutely. However, there are songs that don't say very much. It is the emotion behind the song. I've listened to Library of Congress records, field records, and you hear something. It's like we have communication that is beyond what words are. We don't even have words to cover all of that that we sense and feel, so we get messages. So words or intention are very much important to me, yeah.

Tavis: We mentioned Dr. King earlier. I want to come back to him because you were at the 1963 March on Washington. I'm not sure I want to color this too much - just take me back. Take me back to that day.

Odetta: It was stunning when I got up in the front there and I looked at a sea of people, knowing that many of the people coming went through a hard time just to get enough to get on the bus to ride. It was stunning because all through my life, I had been given the notion that we as Blacks didn't stand together.

It was stunning that the pulling together - my mother, when I was growing up, if the telephone company sent a bill to her for $500, she would scrape the $500 together. But with the civil rights movement, there was something that happened to her where she'd go to the office and say, "Excuse me?" So it was -

Tavis: A certain kind of boldness, yeah.

Odetta: It emboldened us, yes, yes.

Tavis: To your mother and your childhood growing up, which you've referenced a few times now, we established earlier that you were actually born in Alabama, in Birmingham, I think.

Odetta: Yes.

Tavis: Brought out here with your family at the age of six. When we think of the civil rights movement and all that came out of it, we tend to think for obvious reasons of the South. Yet your connection to it is so profound. How did that happen being way out here in Los Angeles?

Odetta: Well, you see, we didn't have signs out here, but we knew where we couldn't and shouldn't go.

Tavis: Oh, yeah. I see. (Laughter)

Odetta: There was an expression; it was "down north" or something like that. Yes, we knew. It was not until we're in school did we go to, say, when the Philharmonic Auditorium was there, right. There were just places you didn't go because someone might shame you or dishonor you, so you wouldn't want to put yourself in a position of being yelled at or shamed.

Tavis: Although there weren't the white and colored signs as they had -

Odetta: That was a thing that Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King did in the civil rights movement. Before, we shouldn't, because like when we would visit Alabama, my mother would send somebody who lived there with us so that we wouldn't do something that we shouldn't do in the south.

But that area of emboldening, not waiting for somebody to say, "Okay, you can come in," is what took place there. It was helped by Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. So many people - so many people involved.

Tavis: I don't mean to make you political, and you go wherever you want to go with this.

Odetta: Well, honey, you can't make me political. You can't unpoliticize me. (Laughter)

Tavis: I get the feeling that I can't make you do much of nothing (laughter). That said, what do you make of the fact that, in this year where we commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, we have not just a Black man but indeed a white woman running for president?

Odetta: Sometimes we get very impatient and we feel that things are not changing, but this is an all of a sudden, "Wow, look where we are." At one point, I understand that the United States wouldn't elect a Catholic for president. So this is an incredible example of the fact that things have been changing; are changing. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I'm pleased to have witnessed it, for sure.

Tavis: When I say Bob Dylan, what comes to mind?

Odetta: Well, I have to thank him for his popularity, and I do appreciate that he has honored me by saying that there was something of whatever it was I was doing that helped him pursue his own path. And because of it, I'm more known than if he had not come along.

I don't know, if I were striped and maybe another color, my name might even be further out there than it is now. But because of Bob Dylan, my name is out there somewhat, you know. It's almost - I keep thinking of the Great White Hope, and for the community or someone out of the community to do something and then there's an invitation of what that person is doing, and then the invitation is the one that is spotlighted.

Tavis: I know of which you speak, which raises this question: Whether or not there is ever cause or occasion for you to be bitter, angry, upset, have angst - you pick a word if it applies at all - about the fact that, as much as you are out there, you are not out there more because of these external factors.

Odetta: I think I go two ways on that. There's some times that I resent, but then I see how the media treats those who are terribly popular and famous and I'm very happy. (Laughter)

Tavis: I don't want none of that.

Odetta: I'm very happy they're not up in my face.

Tavis: That is a brilliant answer - I've never heard it quite put that way. So when you get resentful, you just kind of think about all that hell they catch. "No, I think I'm okay right where I am."

Odetta: Exactly.

Tavis: Tell me about this CD, the one you were Grammy-nominated for, "Gonna Let it Shine." You're going to perform something for us in a moment off this CD, but tell me about this CD.

Odetta: It was a part of a benefit for FUV, a radio station in New York City, and they were fundraising. You've heard of fundraising for television in the media. (Laughter)

Tavis: This is PBS and I do it every day on PBS and PRI. I know it all too well - thanks to viewers like you. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Odetta: So we did a concert for them and it was recorded, and then they put the record out. But the "Let it Shine" is something that I read a Maryanne poem before I sing, and then I ask the audience to sing "This Little Light of Mine." It's the area of participating together. It may be the only thing of the day or in our lives or in the year where we do something together.

Even back to the times in - you're too young to remember, but in the movies, they had sing along with the bouncing ball? Even that. Whatever it is, I feel music is healing - I really do feel that - and I think it's necessary to remind ourselves and to participate as much as possible within our lives.

Tavis: "This Little Light of Mine," as far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest songs ever penned. It is a powerful lyric. "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine."

Odetta: It's reclaiming ourselves, isn't it? It's reaffirming ourselves, and we don't get much of that.

Tavis: As Odetta mentioned during our conversation, there was nothing that she loved more than performing. As we closed out our time with her back in January, she graced us with a memorable performance from her Grammy-nominated CD, "Gonna Let it Shine." Odetta was planning to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration next month, and I can't help thinking that the song she sang for us, "Keep On Moving It On," may have been appropriate for that historic occasion."

[Performance]

Tavis: A powerful song from a remarkable woman. Bob Dylan once famously said that an Odetta record was the first thing that turned him on to folk singing. He was just one of the many artists she would ultimately influence. For the last few years, Odetta's mounting hospital bills were covered by the generous support of the Jazz Foundation of America. If you'd like to make a donation on Odetta's behalf, please visit JazzFoundation.org.