In 1937, Odetta Felious Holmes moved from Birmingham, Alabama, to Los Angeles. Only six, she was already bigger than the other kids when she arrived in East Hollywood with her mother, Flora, and her ...

Listen to more of Steve Inskeep's interview with Odetta. Folk-music legend Odetta died Tuesday at the age of 77. In this 2005 interview, she discusses her long and diverse career. Odetta Holmes ...

We all know the story of Bob Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival: the boos, the cheers, Pete Seeger overheard backstage wishing that he had an axe to chop through the microphone ...

On the night of May 30, 1964, the Alabama-born singer Odetta watched a thunderstorm explode over Brussels from her room at the Amigo hotel. She was on her first European tour, promoting her twelfth ...

Odetta: Live at 75 with 'Let It Shine' Legendary blues and folk singer Odetta is marking her 75th birthday with a live performance CD called Gonna Let It Shine: A Concert for the Holidays. She tells ...

In 1959, Harry Belafonte produced and starred in a live prime-time special that he envisioned as a musical portrait of black America. He had the box-office clout to call the shots, which included an ...

“If I had to pick one person responsible for the establishment of the Newport Folk Festival in 1959,” said the festival founder George Weing, “it would be Odetta.” After hearing her album Odetta Sings ...

Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century, has died. She was 77. By The Associated Press NEW YORK — Odetta, the folk singer ...

Before there was Bob Dylan, the folk revival icon, there was Odetta. Before there was Janis Joplin, the wailing blues singer, there was Odetta. The woman whom Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Queen ...

In the biography of nearly every white rock performer of a certain vintage, there’s a pivotal moment — more pivotal than signing the ill-advised first contract that leads to decades of litigation, and ...