Odetta - Looking for a Home
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CD Details
Artist: OdettaEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2001-08-28
Music Label: M.C. Records
Soundtracks:
- Goodnight Irene
- You Don't Know My Mind
- MOther's Blues
- When I Was A Cowboy
- In The Pines
- How Long
- Bourgeois Blues
- Alabama Bound/Boll Weevil
- Roberta
- New Orleans
- Jim Crow Blues
- Rock Island Line
- Julie Anne Johnson/Who Black Buck
- Easy Rider
- Midnight Special
Music reviews of Looking for a Home
Music Review: Odetta Pays Her Dues
Rating: 4 Stars
I have been listening to and occasionally attending concerts by the recently departed Odetta for over forty years and she, despite her various illnesses in her latter years was still able to bring that big strong voice to her work as she did when I first heard her. A big strong strumming guitar added to the pleasure. And on this album some helpful and thoughtful backup work by her band members. Odetta was the consummate female interpreter of the old ballads that denoted the struggle of blacks and other at work and play in slavery times and later in wage slavery times. Religious sentiments about a better life in the hereafter because this life so is hell are also interwoven into some these ballads. It is hard today to get the full impact of that genre but I always noticed that audiences still responded to her gentle prodding to sing along.
There is an old expression-"What goes around, comes around". Nothing profound in that but it does point out that Odetta was very aware of her roots, of her debts to earlier black singers and influences and of the need to pay back those debts. The last part of her career included efforts in that direction, a prime example being this cover tribute to the legendary country blues singer and performer Leadbelly. On the face of it the storied rough and ready life of an old time rural country blues singer caught up in a violent and unforgiving world that included a southern prison and the rather proper upbringing of a modern city-bred and educated woman would not seem a match that makes musical sense. However, go back to the beginning of this paragraph and the part about roots and debts. That, my friends is the link, the eternal binding.
That said, Odetta does not try, like many an urban folkie of the 1960's and others to imitate, Leadbelly's style, manner and mistakes but hones her own renditions and gives them her own interpretation. That is the true way to honor one's forbears. Thus, although not every song here makes you want to throw away your old Leadbelly albums there are many more hits than misses. The hits- a very upbeat, carib-influenced rendition of the Leadbelly theme song, "Goodnight, Irene"; a very political take (highlighting Jim Crow racism) on "Bourgeois Blues" and "Easy Rider" (also known as "C.C. Rider"). The misses- "Midnight Special"; "How Long" and "Rock Island Line". Overall though a nice tribune from one legendary singer to another.
Description of Looking for a Home
In case you haven't noticed, the glorious voice of Odetta still rings true at the turn of the century. Following her acclaimed 1999 comeback Blues Everywhere I Go, the remarkable folk-revival veteran offers this engaging and inspired homage to Leadbelly, who passed away just as Odetta was beginning her own storied career. Clearly, Odetta admires the diversity of Huddie Ledbetter's repertoire, as she herself has made her living interpreting everything from folk ballads and 12-bar blues standards to protest songs, work songs, children's songs, and gospel. What makes this project so successful are the creative and wholly original arrangements she gives these tunes. "Goodnight Irene" and "Rock Island" are reinvented as funky piano-driven slices of New Orleans blues-boogie, with Odetta's languid phrasing perfectly contrasting the underlying rhythms, while "In the Pines" is reborn in a gospel vein with Henry Butler on piano. Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (on violin) and Kim Wilson (on harp) have guest spots, but Odetta commands the show throughout, understanding and inhabiting these songs as only she can, and clearly conveying their pain, bitterness, and world-weariness. --Marc GreilsamerGeneral CDs
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