Samstag, 18. Juni 2022

Odetta‎ – One Grain Of Sand (1963)


Odetta comes from an old school of black American song interpreters, often overlooked after the 50s-early 60s folk scene when the pigeon-holeing of the day seemed to find no room to accommodate anything other than traditional song (blues, worksongs, gospel), protest and singer-songwriter fare. Odetta was instead in a line of black artists, which included Paul Robeson, Jackie Washington, Harry Belafonte, Leon Bibb (Eric’s father) and many others, whose repertoire was drawn from the breadth of commercial and folk song.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1930, Odetta had voice and classical music training as a youngster. She appeared in the 1949 Los Angeles production of Finian’s Rainbow and a year later in the San Francisco run of Guys And Dolls before being drawn into the emerging folk scene of the early 1950s. Her début album “The Tin Angel” was released in 1954 and over the next decade she established herself as one of the folk scene’s most authoritative voices.

By 1963, when she released ONE GRAIN OF SAND, Odetta was a formidable cultural presence (check out her “live” work on the just-released DVD of Festival, taken from the early 60s Newport Folk Festivals). “One Grain Of Sand” finds her singing and playing guitar with accompaniment by Bill Lee (Spike Lee’s father, who also was responsible for the music in his son’s movie Mo’ Better Blues) on string bass. She covers everything from Leadbelly’s Midnight Special to Woody Guthrie’s Rambling Round Your City and American folk ballads such as Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies. It’s the contrasts that always surprise: the haunting traditional She Moved Through The Fair positioned next to the singing cowboy classic Cool Water (a song written by the Sons Of The Pioneers’ Bob Nolan). Also, worth checking out is Bill Lee’s excellent bass playing on the title song, interweaving with, and supporting, Odetta’s moving, slightly distracted vocal. -  John Crosby


By the time the independent folk label Vanguard Records got around to releasing its sixth Odetta album, One Grain of Sand, in 1963, the singer had already decamped to RCA Victor and released her major-label debut, Sometimes I Feel Like Cryin', in 1962. But One Grain of Sand is not just a collection of outtakes assembled to fulfill a contract and take revenge on a departed artist. It finds Odetta accompanying herself as usual on acoustic guitar and joined by Bill Lee on string bass, putting her inimitable stamp on a good set of traditional folk songs along with numbers associated with Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger. She also brings in spirituals, blues, and even country on a cover of "Cool Water." But, given her distinctive vocal approach, every song from every genre becomes an Odetta song, with her contralto finding unusual depths of feeling in even the lighter fare. It might be argued that, in the early '60s, partially because of record company machinations, Odetta had a glut of LPs in release. But when even a minor one displays such quality, it's hard to complain.                


Tracklist
A1Sail Away Ladies2:37
A2Moses, Moses2:55
A3Midnight Special3:22
A4Rambler-Gambler3:19
A5Cotton Fields3:23
A6Roll On, Buddy3:04
A7Ain't No Grave2:02
B1Special Delivery Blues2:36
B2Rambling Round Your City4:02
B3Boll Weevil2:13
B4Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies3:23
B5She Moved Through The Fair3:00
B6Cool Water3:03
B7One Grain Of Sand2:06


Odetta – One Grain Of Sand (1963)          
(320 kbps, cover art included)                  

14 Kommentare:

Magic Kaic's Music hat gesagt…

Thank you so much for this beautiful music

Axel56789 hat gesagt…

Can you make this link back? I have this plate lost because of my hard disc crash and i can't live without this. Help me, please! :(
http://zerogsound.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/va-chanson-in-der-ddr-kein-tag-ist-sicher-vor-der-nacht/

zero hat gesagt…

Thanks for you feedback, Magic Kaic! You are welcome!

Axel56789, i will repost the link in the next hour. All the best!

Feilimid O'Broin hat gesagt…
Dieser Kommentar wurde vom Autor entfernt.
Feilimid O'Broin hat gesagt…

My wife, I, and another couple saw Odetta play in the mid-eighties. She was relatively unknown and regarded as a historic relic of a bygone folk scene at the time. I cannot remember her receiving any airplay on folk or blues radio stations. Despite her relative anonymity to the audience which was occasionally too noisy, she still had that powerful, commanding voice and ability to sing folk and blues ballads and other people's songs as if they were her own. Our only regret was that we had not seen her in a quieter venue and perhaps one that that didn't serve alcohol. I remember feeling in awe as if I were seeing and listening to a legend, which, of course, I was. In addition, I wondered about the irony of so great a singer passionately devoted to preserving African-American songster traditions singing before an audience that was ninety nine percent white. Despite cosmetic and minor progress in race relations since she first emerged on the U. S. folk scene, recent events here show how little progress has been made in valuing African-American lives in this country and, more often than not, memories of the late fifties and early sixties come to mind as this country resists dealing intelligently with the intractable legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. If anything, the election of Barack Obama has created a white backlash to obstruct his presidency and preserve white entitlement and power as reflected by the Tea Party and the reactionary politics of the Republican party which extols many of the positions that George Wallace advocated in his failed 1968 bid for the presidency. No surprise there because many southern Republicans are former reactionary Democrats who fled the party en masse after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights bill.

I wish we had seen Odetta in a better venue, such as Passim's in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I am I suppose musicians have to earn a living in whatever venue is available and I am immensely glad that we saw her play and sing . Several years ago Tavis Smiley devoted a show to Odetta and gave her her due. It was gratifying to see her recognized for her great impact in music and the struggle for human rights. Shorty afterwards she died and I began and listening to her anew. Sometimes we don't appreciate what we have until it or he or she is gone, Thanking you for posting this and other albums by her. Like many other songsters and folk and blues artists, she was often better appreciated in Europe than here in the United States so I am very grateful that you choose to keep her music alive. .

Feilimid O'Broin hat gesagt…

Thank you again for posting this and for your diligence in preserving the great nearly forgotten voices of American folk music such as Odetta, Barbara Dane, Dave Van Ronk, etc. My scratched vinyl records are no match in sound quality for these wonderful downloads so I am very greatful that you take the time and expend the effort to post them.

zero hat gesagt…

Thanks a lot for sharing your interesting thoughts with us, Feilimid!

Now there´s a fresh link...

Todd hat gesagt…

Is there any chance of a reup, please?

zero hat gesagt…

Now there´s a fresh link!

Todd hat gesagt…

Hey, thank you!

zero hat gesagt…

You are welcome!

Anonym hat gesagt…

Dear Sir, restore?
Bless...

rosbeliobones9223@gmail,com hat gesagt…

Muito obrigado mesmo !!!

zero hat gesagt…

You are welcome!

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