FOLK GREAT ODETTA LETS IT SHINE FOR THE HOLIDAYS WITH NEW CONCERT RECORDING ON M.C. RECORDS             

RealMedia Clips: This Little Light Of Mine                   Rise Up Shepherd                 Mary Had A Baby

The incomparable folk and blues great, Odetta, a living legend and national treasure who marched with Dr. King, performed for Presidents Kennedy and Clinton, and inspired a young Bob Dylan, gives a superlative live performance on her forthcoming CD Gonna Let It Shine: A Concert for the Holidays, a collection of spirituals,  released on the M.C. Records label on October 18.

Recorded live in the music hall at New York City's Fordham University, the influential public radio station WFUV sponsored the evening's concert and the station's music director Rita Houston, hosted the show.  The Holmes Brothers and pianist Seth Farber support Odetta on the 16 tracks, most of which are from the African American Christmas song tradition, with additional selections from the spirituals and prison song repertoire

In her liner notes for the package, Bernice Johnson Reagon, of the pioneering a cappella group Sweet Honey in The Rock, calls Gonna Let It Shine "a rare and beautiful marker in this extraordinary cultural journey stretching more than six decades."Odetta's voice is different in some ways. There's a richness, subtlety and a vulnerability that wasn't there 40 years ago," notes Mark Carpentieri, the project's producer. "I think as a musician she is, remarkably, still growing. This performance is reminiscent of her classic '60s live albums. She has the power and the range and there is such vocal clarity. When you talk about genius, you talk about Odetta."

"Mary Had a Baby," "What Month Was Jesus Born In?," "Shout for Joy," and "Virgin Mary Had One Son," are beautifully uplifting songs that both celebrate the arrival of the new baby as the hope of the world while transcending modern religious and cultural boundaries. Some of these carols sound like lullabies and others like "What Month Was Jesus Born In?," are teaching play songs. Odetta's commentary throughout the performance provides context as she speaks to the audience about the meaning of these songs to those who were bound in slavery, the catalyst that brought forth the creation and singing of these songs.

Also included on the album is "Freedom Trilogy" a medley of spirituals with some text changes by Odetta. "Oh Freedom," "Come and Go With Me to That Land," and "I'm on My Way," served as frontline freedom songs during the intense campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. They are rendered here with Odetta's fine gift for vocal phrasing over Farber's moving piano line. "Somebody Talking 'Bout Jesus," one of Odetta's signature songs is followed by "Keep on Moving It On" Odetta's freedom anthem, calling all within the sound of her voice to act, to not be immobile, but to move forward.

Called the "Queen of American Folk Music" and "Mother Goddess of Folk/Blues" by the New York Times, Odetta is one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century. Before Odetta, no solo woman performer (let alone an African American woman!) singing blues, folk, work and protest songs had recorded or toured.  A leading voice during the Civil Rights Movement, Odetta joined Dr. King in the March on Selma; she sang for the masses at the 1963 March on Washington; she performed for President Kennedy and his cabinet on the nationally televised civil rights special "Dinner with the President"; and, along with Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, was among the first group of artists to be honored with the Duke Ellington Fellowship Award. She was appointed an `Elder' to the 1994 International Women's Conference in Beijing; and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 1999 by the President and Mrs. Clinton.  Her 1956 album, Odetta Sings Ballads & Blues inspired a young Bob Dylan to trade in his electric guitar and amp for a flat top Gibson acoustic. She has acted in films and theater; sung with symphony orchestras; hosted the Montreux Jazz Festival and starred in countless TV Specials. Her 1999 album, Blues Everywhere I Go earned a Grammy nomination, while her next album, Lookin' for A Home, received two W.C. Handy Awards nominations in 2002. She earned another W.C. Handy Award nomination for Best Traditional Female Blues Artist of the Year in 2004 and in 2005 she received the International Folk Alliance's Lifetime Achievement Award in Montreal.

This year, the 74-year-old Odetta celebrates the 60^th Anniversary of her storied professional career. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, December 31, 1930, and raised and schooled in Los Angeles from the age of six, Odetta, who currently resides in New York, began serious studies of classical music and voice at 13. The following year she joined the star-studded repertoire company of Hollywood's Turnabout Theatre, where she stayed for five years.  Though she dreamed of being a classical singer she was aware that even the great Marian Anderson couldn't break through the segregationist barriers of the major opera companies.  So, at 18, Odetta joined the chorus of the road company tour of "Finian's Rainbow" (which included folk legend, Sonny Terry), and while in San Francisco, she became exposed to folk music, learned to play the guitar and soon began appearing at that city's popular folk clubs. Word quickly spread across the country, of this powerful black woman singing Negro folk songs, who could shake the rafters with her voice and touch one's soul with her words and dramatic presence. Upon arriving in New York the first time, Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte repeatedly came to her shows, and actively brought influential people with them who were instrumental in assisting and furthering her career.   She was soon breaking ground for black female artists in America.

Odetta explored fields of song, and showed a great depth of feeling whether she sang Negro work songs, blues, jazz,  spirituals, white Appalachian songs or English folk songs—always masterfully accompanied by her own unique guitar style.   Her exploration left her with a deep passion for American folk music—determining that it is a "unique music form, because it is derived from a combination of different peoples, coming from almost every continent and country, with all those who immigrated to America. Everyone came here from somewhere else with his own music and American folk music became a unique blend of all people's music."  Much of her research and her eventual repertoire came from The Archives of Folk Music at The Library of Congress. "I'm an interpreter of folk music," she has said.  "It encompasses more than folk songs handed down from the generations. It includes work songs, game songs, children's songs, gospel and blues, songs, from people who had to entertain themselves outside of their daily work and songs for people and their emotional needs."

Poet Laureate Maya Angelou, Odetta's friend of 50 years, writes in her introduction to Blues Everywhere I Go (1999),"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."