Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of December 31st.
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It is the 365th day of the year, the final day of 2021. So, happy 2022. Let's hope it's better than this year, and last year.`
On this date in 1930, the multi-talented singer and activist Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala. She was known simply as Odetta, and told her stories in folk songs.
She took her first opera lesson in 1943 -- and the following year made her professional debut in musical theater. By 1949 she was part of the national touring group of Finian's Rainbow, and it was during a stop in San Francisco she discovered folk music.
Odetta found her true love and became part of the America folk music revival in the 1950s and 1960s. She inspied artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Mavis Staples.
When Pete Seeger heard her for the first time in the 1950s, she sang "Take This Hammer" in a friend's living room. "She was astonishingly strong and direct and wanted her songs to help this would be a better place," Seeger told NPR when Odetta died in 2008.
It was the American Civil Rights movement that inspired her, and her fans included Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., who called her "the queen of American folk music." At the 1963 March on Washington, she was on stage, singing, "O Freedom."
She also added to her musical repertoire, singing blues, jazz, and spirituals. She sang a famous and popular duet with the legendary Harry Belefonte. She acted in several films in the 1960s and '70s, including The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
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