Article from: The Australian NEW YORK: Odetta, the folk singer and civil rights campaigner, has died before she could fulfil her wish to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration as president. She was 77. Odetta died on Tuesday of heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital, said her manager of 12 years, Doug Yeager. She was admitted to the hospital with kidney failure almost four weeks ago, four days after Mr Obama's election victory. One of the great voices of the civil rights movement, Odetta brought the diva-like power of an opera singer to US folk music. Had she chosen the world of R&B, gospel and soul music, she might have been a rival to Aretha Franklin, Mavis Staples and Nina Simone, but she preferred the more understated pleasures of folk, although her repertoire did also encompass blues, spiritual, jazz and and civil rights songs. An early influence on Bob Dylan, she drew her own inspiration from the great seam of traditional US song and the acoustic blues of the pre-war era.
A tireless campaigner for liberal causes, she was at the side of Martin Luther King in Washington in 1963 when he made his "I have a dream" speech and she was one of the first names Barack Obama pencilled in to sing at his inauguration ceremony. No folk singer of Dylan's generation was immune to her influence. By the time Joan Baez and Dylan appeared on the scene, she was already a star. Dylan had heard her Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues in 1959, before he arrived in Greenwich Village, and its impact on him was as profound as his discovery of Woody Guthrie. By the early 1960s, although still in her 30s, Odetta was the grande dame of the folk revival. In 1961, Martin Luther King described her as the queen of American folk music. Two years later, he asked her to accompany him on his freedom march on Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, she sang I'm on My Way before he made his famous speech, and it was this song that Mr Obama asked her to sing at his inauguration 46 years later. The Times
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