Bless You, My Hero

The iconic Odetta -- singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement "-- died on December 2. This coming New Years Eve would have been her 78th birthday. Here, Carly Simon remembers the thrill of meeting her idol at the beginning of her own career, and says a loving farewell.

It must have been 1964. Lucy Simon, my sister, and I, had made a terrific arrangement whereby she and I would live in a dorm in the main house of an enormous and ever rolling property in Lenox, Massachusetts called The Music Inn. We shared a row of beds with the cooks, waitresses and cleaning girls. We were the on-site singers. There was an informal, bar-like tavern called The Potting Shed, where Lucy and I performed every night of the week for two weeks in a row.

Within the complex there was a concert hall called the Music Barn. All the important jazz and folk acts of the sixties played there. I remember seeing Judy Collins, Ornette Coleman, Woody Guthrie, Dave Brubeck, Pete Seeger and... Odetta.

Odetta was (in my memory) famously scheduled to play at the Music Barn at the end of the second week that we were in residence. At night in the dorm room, we shared stories about everyone's eating habits, how the guests left their clothes in a mess or in perfect order, and what everyone was reading. I remember who snored and who smelled like what particular hand lotion. There was buzz about every up-and-coming act at the Music Barn. Because I was only in residence when Odetta was due to play, I really only remember the buzz that particular week before she -- the amazing, beautiful, regal, brilliant, favorite singer of mine: Odetta -- was going to play. We were -- all of us in the dorm that Friday night before the show -- so especially nervous and excited to have her within our midst. I knew by heart every record she had recorded, and I was famous in my high school, from which i had recently graduated, for singing like Odetta. The main chapel at school had the kind of acoustics which invited anyone to try to sound like Odetta. Few succeeded. I almost did. It was in my high school senior year book that I did, which is why I even dare to say that.

Lucy and I went to Odetta's concert at eight o'clock on a Saturday night. We were due to begin singing at the Potting Shed at ten. We would have time to quickly brush our hair and change clothes and make it over to the Shed in time to be introduced: "And now... the angelic voices of the Simon Sisters..."

Odetta's concert was more than I could ever tell you about now. I remembered being visited by things other than from this world. I remember believing how I might someday be as self-assured and have my voice ring out in a real concert hall. I remember how I loved this woman on stage, and though she was accompanied by a bass player Bill Lee -- [Spike Lee's father] -- I seem to remember she could have stroked all the way to my soul by singing an a capella concert. Her enormous Drednaught guitar was a booming and fascinating force. Bill Lee was right in the pocket, but it was hard to think that we would be singing so shortly after. Lucy and I, in our matching peasant blouses and with our Scottish folk songs.

We ran, and were out of breath by the time we got to the dressing room at the Potting Shed after having to leave before the encores. We made it just in time to be a little late.

"And now... the enchanting voices of the Simon Sisters..." We attempted striding on stage and began the first song: "Wynken Blinken and Nod," a really popular and strikingly good rendition of Eugene Field's poem, set to music by Lucy. The audience gave us a very warm round of applause. Then I looked at the table that came almost up to the stage. The room was heavy and warm with summer and smoke, and there were single men whistling from the bar in the back. But I looked at the table right in front of the stage. My gaze fell singularly on... Odetta. My God! She was there. How did she get there? Why? Oh God... oh no... oh, I'm blacking out! I really am not kidding,I am blacking out...

I woke up lying on the floor with four or five people taking my pulse. There was even a weird person taking a picture of me. But then Odetta was looking down at me, herself. She was fanning me with a menu. She was asking me if I was all right. What embarrassment I felt, being so weak and in front of the great Odetta. I got up so fast and the energy of simple embarrassment lifted me on to the stage, where we performed our eight songs and I sang out and I sang big and I sang without fear. Lucy and I were in perfect synch, and our harmonies never sounded as filled with the flowers of a Scottish highland and yet rising and falling like the wind that blows through them.

It was perfect. It was a night like no other. I couldn't talk afterward. It feels as if I have never been so stage struck (literally) by anyone ever since. It can only happen once.

Odetta is my hero. She is my only legitimate first hero. Since Odetta they have merged, my heros, but Odetta stands singular as my most fabulous and most adored influence. I can name you many, many more influences -- later and different but never as strong. Like a first love, you can imitate it, maybe change it here and there, but the first cut is the deepest and the one that never leaves.

Bless you, my dearest, dearest powerhouse of a miracle talent -- my first and very most heroic hero.

I tend to hyperbole, but not in your case.

Love,

Carly

Comments

[Cherylbeee]

I read this when it was first published and some how could not log in...so this is a tad delayed...Carly, what a wonderful tribute you have made...I am happy to report I saw Odetta perform very recently at Royce Hall as part of the 50th Anniversary of McCabe's Celebration. Nancy Covey put together such a brilliant night of music and performance, but my God, Odetta rolled out onto that stage and just brought down the house. Her voice, her soul, her presence was so deep, so profound. Very grateful to have seen her at one of her very last performances...she was and always will be able to get you down to the bone...i get goosebumps just recalling the timbre of her.

[Pulladigm]

I first heard Odetta when I was 16. A friend played me 'Ballad for Americans.'I was entranced, enthralled, smitten.
I had seen her in concert over the years. I had all her albums. My mom would sing along w/ the same lusty abandon. 30 years after I had first heard her the year after I lost my Mom, I met her at the Hudson River Clearwater Revival. I cried when I told her how my mother should have been hear and she reached out and embraced me.
When I heard Odetta had died I felt the same emptiness in my heart as when I lost my mother. I thought of the words of Don McLean,"The day the music died."

[NWReader]

My mother played a game when she brought me home from the hospital. She discovered it by accident: they settled in and Mom put on her favorite Odetta album. When she sang, "He's got the whole world in His hand" I started to cry When the song was over, I stopped. Curious, she put the needle back and played the song again. And I cried again. Start the music, baby cries, stop the music baby stops. For years the game was, hey want to her the baby cry? Listen to this song!"

All grown up now, I bought one of her CD's a few years ago. Sure enough, that song still brings me to tears. I feel, as long as she is singing, the hand of God holding me, cradling me, protecting me. And in the dark moments of my recent life, I can feel His presence when I listen to her voice.

So thank you, Odetta, for bringing me to the hand of God. I sure needed it.

[guajiro]

Carly, I loved your songs when they came out. Over the years as I went to college at night, worked two or three jobs at a time, I missed many "happenings". The last 4 years or so I've been catching up and when I listened to your albums a flood of happy memories came rushing back. Only now I'm older and can appreciate your music even more. "We have no secrets" is timeless to me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being so human in recognizing Ms. Odetta's life.

[ktylerconk]

Such a beautifully written and moving tribute! As you are one of my musical heroes, it is even more meaningful to read your words about Odetta. I was singing "You're so Vain" in college when it first came out, and must admit that I still break out into it occasionally to the embarrassment of some of my friends. Ironically, I started singing it with a friend last night, and when I said "gavotte", she told me that I was wrong, it was "go bÿ". I just looked up the lyrics and I won the bet!

If you haven't read it yet, you should read "NOT FADE AWAY: A SHORT LIFE WELL LIVED" by Peter Barton, who was a close friend of a friend of mine. He has a charming little story in there of storing his Porsche at your parents' house while attending Columbia University. He described your mother as the classiest woman he had ever met. It is a very cute anecdote.

Thank you for all of the beautiful music!

[Clairvaux]

Cute story, Ms. Simon.

[PlantGod72]

This posted from the Joan Baez website:

We join the world in mourning the death of traditional folk great Odetta at 77 from heart disease in New York. Significant obituaries ran in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Joan was deeply saddened by the news and offered the following:


"I knew Odetta from my earliest beginnings in folk music. As I was making the transition from my youthful attempts at rhythm and blues to what would become my future livelihood, Odetta took me under her gracious (and sizable) wing, giving me assurance, confidence, and inspiration. She escorted me to the first Newport Folk Festival and nurtured and coaxed me along the new terrain as if I were her child, which, in a way, I was. Her kindness to me meant everything.
Odetta gave us decades of her extraordinary gift in song and took us to a sacred place which existed somewhere between ourselves and God.

She deserves a quiet rest."

Rest in Peace, Odetta.

[swkidder]

This is really lovely ... and a fitting tribute to the woman .. and the talent .. that inspired it.

[Alvin4NY]

Hey Carly, now I get it. If I had an idol of mine show up in the front row, right after I had seen them perform, I think I would have passed out as well! No wonder you have stage fright! You must have security go out and check the first two rows of every concert you perform now.....looking for your idols. Wonderful tribute. Loved it.

[danbes]

Thank you, Carly, for your moving remembrance of a remarkable human being.

What most memorials don't record is that Odetta actually got her start at my uncle Harry's fmous Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, during the late 1940s. Odetta's mom was the cleaning woman at the theater, and Odetta, who came in on weekends to help her mother with the dusting, could instead often be found listening to Harry's opera records. And singing along with them. When Harry discovered this, he, recognizing her talent, paid for her singing lessons.

In my 1992 video, TURNABOUT, THE STORY OF THE YALE PUPPETEERS, Odetta says that it was her experience at Turnabout Theater that turned her life around; and she attributes her later success to the start that Harry and the Turnabout Theater offered her. (Another thing she told me was that the Afro hairstyle she first wore was originally called an "Odetta" !

Odetta was also a roommate of my first wife, Rose, and when Rose and I married in 1953 she came to our wedding reception in my mother's small Santa Monica apartment, where she sang songs for more than an hour. (Interestingly, since I didn't see my uncle Harry very often during those years, it wasn't until much later that I discovered she'd been working at Turnabout Theater.)

Though I saw her infrequently over the years, Odetta was a good friend. She and her immense talent will be sorely missed.

Dan Bessie / [e-mail]

[111]

thanks for that bit of trivia. She is such a beautiful old soul that I forget that she was once a little girl with chores to do. I have wonderful memories of listening to her records and am glad I was in the world with her for a time.

[provgrays]

What a marvelous tribute. I'm amazed that a not to be forgotten talent like Carly Simon battles stage fright, but it took courage to share something so personal.

[LaSirene]

ODETTA was one of my alltime fave folk singers and a heroine for me too. A few years ago, I saw her perform at a really wonderful very small outdoor music festival in Santa Fe (The Thirsty Ear Festival) which is held on an old movie ranch (western town set, complete with saloons)......she was singing some mildly hypnotic tune- a bunch of children were hula hooping to the music.....there was this one little plump, freckly red haired girl, very fair, right out in the middle of a bunch of sitting people, just hula hooping like a meditative savant, eyes closed........she was marvelous. Suddenly, Odetta interrupted her own song and beamed down upon that fair hula hooper, got her attention, and as though it was channeled like a laser from the Divine, Odetta said, "GURL! YOU---- ARE---- GORGEOUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

At that moment I knew without a doubt that that little girl would NEVER question her GORGEOUSNESS. EVER. The Goddess Spoke.

It was quite moving.

[artmaker52]

Carly, This was naked and and utterly honest. Thank you for telling us this story. I just remember exactly where I was, sitting at a stoplight, in hmmm....about 1972...listening to "You're So Vain" and knowing you were singing my song right then and there. You sang your stories just for me for many years, my friend.

[IDIOTA]

Ms. Simon,

What a great tribute to a woman, Odetta, who is unfamiliar to me. Your speech moves me to find out more about her.

And I must take this opportunity to say that you are always on my Ipod; your lyrics, poetic and sound, have always touched my heart as well as my brain. Thank you, Carly Simon, for the beauty you have brought to the world.

[RadLeftVetPatriot]

I have a similar BB.King story
but I couldn't begin to tell it so well.
At least I didn't pass out.
Thank you..