Dylan to Chapman, They All Owe Odetta

On July 29, 1924, the Ku Klux Klan took over the green patch of Anaheim now known as Pearson Park for a night of pointy-hooded marching. According to historical accounts, more than 10,000 people gathered for that Klan procession and induction ceremony.

At the time, Klan members controlled four of the five City Council seats in Anaheim; in a recall election in February, 1925, the citizenry voted the Klan slate out.

Given that background, it seems only fitting that Odetta will perform in the same park Saturday night. One of the leading figures of the folk boom of the early ‘60s, she will appear as soloist with the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove, bringing a repertoire that includes many traditional songs born out of the hardships of black Americans, from slavery through Jim Crow oppression to the freedom marches of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Besides singing her own songs solo and with orchestral accompaniment, Odetta will narrate the orchestra’s rendition of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,� a tribute constructed around Abraham Lincoln’s own words. The Klan had its shameful inning in Pearson Park; this one belongs to the other side.

The singer was neither bothered nor stirred when told in a recent phone interview that white supremacist rituals once took place on or near the spot where she will perform.

“If I looked to perform only in places and spaces and cities and towns that had a perfect record, I wouldn’t be performing,� she said, breaking into a deep, slow chuckle. Speaking from her home overlooking Central Park, she said, “Right here in New York, during the Civil War they were busy running around and lynching black people.�

As Odetta tells it, racism had a great deal to do with her becoming a folk singer. Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Ala., she moved to Los Angeles with her family when she was 6 years old. She grew up there in the 1930s and ‘40s, taking classical voice training and suffering some of the injuries that came with being black.

“It was called Jim Crow in those days,� she said, just as it was in the South. “They just didn’t have any signs over the drinking fountains, that’s all.

“We lived within walking distance of Marshall High School, but they didn’t let colored people go there, so we had to get on the bus and go to Belmont High School.� In school, Odetta won a spot in a group called the Madrigal Singers, and one of the perquisites was ushering for concerts at the Philharmonic Auditorium in downtown L.A.

“I was ushering, knowing at the same time that none of us--my mother and sister and myself--would have felt comfortable going to that place for a concert, because of the trepidation of having some fool coming up� and causing a scene because they were black.

She also realized that her options in classical music were limited. “I was smart enough to know that a young black woman was not going to get into opera. Nobody needs to tell you when you’re living in a racist society.�

Odetta turned her sights elsewhere. At 19, she landed a part in the chorus of a Los Angeles production of “Finian’s Rainbow.� She kept the part when the musical went on the road to San Francisco. There, Odetta said, she met an old friend from junior high school who had settled in San Francisco’s Bohemian North Beach. It was at the friend’s home that Odetta got her first real taste of folk music, in a late-night song-swapping session.

“That night I heard hours and hours of songs that really touched where I lived,� Odetta said. “I borrowed a guitar and learned three chords, and started to sing at parties.�

She said that traditional prison songs, with their depiction of some of racism’s deepest wounds, hit home the hardest.

“I had a lot of hate and fury in me. As I did those songs, I could work on my hate and fury without being antisocial,� Odetta recalled with a laugh. “Through those songs, I worked my way out of the hate and fury. And through those songs, I learned things about the history of black people in this country that the historians in school had not been willing to tell us about or had lied about.�

Odetta, then in her early 20s, left the theater company in 1950 and took a paying gig at a folk music club in San Francisco. She soon began to tour, and recorded her first album in 1956. By the time folk’s commercial boom arrived in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, she was a folk-scene fixture. Between 1959 and 1965, Odetta played four times at the Newport Folk Festival, folk music’s showcase event. During the ‘60s, she recorded for Vanguard Records, the leading label of the folk boom.

Since then, Odetta has branched into acting, with dramatic and singing roles in film, television and theater. But traditional folk music remains the staple of a career that, at age 60, keeps her traveling about 10 months a year.

One recent highlight, Odetta said, was her three-week tour of Italy last year with Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone. The program, she said, touched on all the key strands in the development of black American music: “I see Miriam Makeba representing Mama Africa, I see Odetta representing how, in spite of the slavers breaking up tribes and selling families away from each other, (enslaved blacks) maintained something of Africa in spirituals, country blues and work songs. Then I see Nina Simone as representing the urban continuation of the music we’d remembered and brought from Africa, with gospel, blues and jazz.� The three singers expect to tour the United States together starting in February, Odetta said.

As she enters her fifth decade as a folk singer, Odetta feels upbeat about the genre’s prospects. “There are small record companies that are doing well. It’s very different than when I was coming up, and you waited to be signed. Some of these (young folk singers) have such wonderful energy. They make their own records, take them out on the road, and word of mouth happens. It may well be considered underground at this point, but it will be a boom when big record companies put the spotlight on someone.�

The success of Tracy Chapman, who Odetta ranks with Bob Dylan and Joan Baez as the three most magnetic folk performers she has seen, demonstrated that folk-based music still has the potential to make a large commercial impact. Odetta said she first heard Chapman when they both played on a women’s folk program in Boston several years ago, before Chapman’s recording career had begun.

“I listened to her and loved her,� Odetta said. “I invited her up to my dressing room, and the old lady was telling this young lady about all the vicious things in this business to watch out for.� After Chapman’s career took off, Odetta said, she sent Chapman a note through a friend: “I thanked her for her patience, listening to that old lady telling her what to do, when all the time she knew exactly what to do.�

While Chapman’s contemporary folk reaches a mass audience, Odetta concentrates on keeping traditional songs alive.

“The folk repertoire is our inheritance. Don’t have to like it, but we need to hear it,� she said. “I love getting to schools and telling kids there’s something else out there. It’s from their forebears, and it’s an alternative to what they hear on the radio. As long as I am performing, I will be pointing out that heritage that is ours.�

And how long might that be?

“I love my work. I figure I’ll retire when I’m 97, even if I only have three more notes to croak.�

* Odetta and the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove perform Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Pearson Park Amphitheatre, at Harbor Boulevard and Sycamore Street in Anaheim. Tickets: $25, $17.50 and $10. Information: (714) 534-1103.

STRANGEJAH IN A STRANGE LAND: StrangeJah Cole, a veteran of the Jamaican ska and reggae scene, is heading back to his homeland to finish his first album in seven years.

Cole, who is now based in Laguna Hills, first hit the Jamaican charts in 1962 under the name Stranger Cole, with a song called “Ruff and Tuff.� The new album, titled “Ruff and Tuff Again,� will feature a new version of that hit, arranged by Cole’s son, Squidly, who plays drums and helps arrange music for Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers.

Cole said he will spend several months in Jamaica mixing the album and doing promotional work after its release there. Meanwhile, Cole said, he is shopping for a record deal in the United States. In any case, he said, the first singles from the album should be available in Orange County stores this summer.