FOLK MUSIC

The journey to discover Odetta

A newfound love of her music leads to a trip today to Newport festival

By James Reed, Globe Staff  |  August 6, 2006

We all have those moments when we're supposed to have epiphanies. When you hear Bob Dylan's ``Blood on the Tracks," the proper reaction is complete awe. Watching ``Annie Hall" for the first time should explain Woody Allen's brilliance. And upon revisiting James Joyce -- after you've turned 25 -- all the wisdom imparted in ``Ulysses" should finally make sense. You should get it.

But what happens when you don't get it? Maybe you can respect it, but enlightenment and appreciation are another story.

One of my colleagues remembers hearing rural bluesman Robert Johnson and thinking, ``What is this? Who wants to listen to field recordings in the 1980s?!"

For me, it was the iconic singer Odetta, who plays at Newport Folk Festival today. It was 10 years ago. I was 18, a college freshman in Missouri, and it made no sense that I didn't exalt Odetta. For the past three years, I had worn out my Phil Ochs and Dylan CDs. My mother scolded me for playing Joan Baez songs too loudly after 10 p.m. on a school night.

But when finally faced with the woman who influenced all of those musicians, I couldn't understand what she represented. Even my favorite indie rockers admired Odetta. On his second 6ths album, Stephin Merritt enlisted her to a sing a song, ``Waltzing Me All the Way Home," which I loved.

What was not computing? Simply put, I wasn't ready for Odetta. She was too much -- the voice too imposing, the passion of her recordings too overwhelming. I knew even then that I couldn't relate to what she was singing about -- distressed maidens, antiwar missives, and primitive prison and work songs.

I finally realized that sometimes we're not ready for music (or any kind of art, for that matter) when we first encounter it. Maybe we have to grow into it, though we can just as easily grow out of it. Odetta understands what I'm talking about.

``Well, of course, the music makes sense to you now. Our world has changed so much since you were 18 and now you're 28," she said last week from her home in New York. ``We're living in a different time now, where there's a lot of uncertainy in the world."

Even as a young, naive music lover, I was aware of Odetta's legacy. Here was a woman, now 75, who sported a closely cropped Afro in the 1950s, long before Angela Davis became a pinup for ``black is beautiful" pride. She looked just like she sounded: like royalty. Dylan famously claimed that after hearing ``Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," he immediately switched from electric to acoustic guitar. And stapled to the last sheet of her 14-page biography is a list of people who have praised Odetta, ranging from Janis Joplin and Maya Angelou to Spike Lee and Bill Clinton.

As seen in last year's Martin Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan, ``No Direction Home," Odetta was fierce. Fierce enough to be ahead of her time. Cast in a lone spotlight, her guitar (nicknamed ``Baby") held high as she strummed it violently, she bellowed ``Water Boy" as if it hurt her. Then, without warning, she barked like . . . well, like a wounded animal.

Part of my initial problem was that I didn't immediately love the recordings Odetta first became famous for. She has sung everything from blues to soul, gospel, jazz, and pop, but her folk ballads immortalized her. For me, there was something too noble about them. Instead, for $8.99 at a local record store a few months ago, I picked up ``Odetta Sings," a 1970 album of mostly covers of songs written by Paul McCartney, Randy Newman, and others. It's not exactly considered an Odetta classic and never even made the leap to CD. But I was transfixed. Her delivery was a little off, but honest and heart-rending. She sounded like no other soul singer I had ever heard.

After that, I was primed to revisit her other work. Online, I ordered the import-only ``Odetta Sings Dylan," the 1965 album that established her as a masterful interpreter of Dylan's catalog . In one determined trip to Tower Records, I got the essentials: ``The Tin Angel," ``Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," and an excellent compilation of her early blues repertoire, ``Livin' With the Blues."

Then came the clincher: Watching a surreal YouTube video of Odetta singing a duet of ``Shame and Scandal" with Johnny Cash. He looks absolutely terrified to be singing alongside one of his early influences. It's a feat to upstage Johnny Cash, and she does it. (Love the fluttering flute solos, too.)

It's not just music that can elude us, either. Think about all the literature you read in high school that went right over your head. J.D. Salinger maybe felt appropriate, even familiar, but is a 16-year-old really ready for ``Beowulf" or even ``Lolita"?

Bill Arning, a curator at MIT, recalls his own experience of delayed understanding. ``When I was first getting a serious reputation as a curator in my later 20s, I craved difficult art, and I equated the refusal of sensual pleasure with cultural worth," he says. ``So at the time, the lusciously colored, shaped monochromes of Ellsworth Kelly were way too decorative and viewer-friendly for me. But later in life, I realized that every decision Kelly made was perfect. In a period of deep mourning after the death of a close relative, I walked into his retrospective at the Guggenheim and was astounded by how his colors and shapes made the world vibrant again for me."

Of course, a few friends have been skeptical of my newfound appreciation of Odetta. ``Isn't that just jumping on the bandwagon since she was featured in that Bob Dylan documentary you just saw?" someone razzed me. If anything, Odetta is evergreen, her artistry universal.

Then they ask me what I envision I'll learn to appreciate in the future. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll get through Joni Mitchell's ``Hejira" and understand all the fuss. Or perhaps I'll gingerly sip a bitter Campari like a pro. Until then, I'll be thrilled to see a true legend in Newport today. It's much better late than never.

James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.