Died On This Date (December 2, 2008) Odetta / Folk and Blues Icon
themusicsover Odetta Holmes
December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008
Odetta Holmes was a politically charged folk, blues and gospel singer-songwriter and activist who has been called “the voice of the civil rights movement.” Most prominent during the folk movement of the ’60s, Odetta was not only a peer, but an influence on such folk greats as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Harry Belafonte. She was born in Birmingham, AL but raised in Los Angeles where she studied music and received opera singing lessons as a young teen. After taking a stab at musical theater, she turned her focus to folk singing in 1950 and set out across America to sing at all the usual suspect folk clubs and gatherings. She began releasing albums in 1954, and over the course of her career, recorded for such highly regarded labels as Fantasy, Folkways, RCA Victor, and Vanguard Records who continue to keep her legacy alive thanks to the tireless work of Morgana Kennedy, Dan Sell and Stephen Brower. In September of 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Medal of Arts, the highest honor presented to an artist on behalf of the American people. Odetta stayed active as a performer and activist up until her final days. In 2008, she embarked on what would be her final tour of North America at the age of 77. Odetta ill in late 2008 and though planning to perform at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, she died of heart disease on December 2, 2008.
Thanks to Craig Rosen of Number1Albums for the assist.
What You Should Own
David Blue was a folk singer songwriter who came to prominence as part of the Greenwich Village scene that also produced Eric Andersen, Bob Dylan and 
Eric Woolfson was a much respected Scottish musician, songwriter and singer who is best remembered as one-half of the driving force behind the Alan Parsons Project. Woolfson started out mostly as a songwriter, penning songs for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Peter Noone and the Tremeloes. In the early ’70s, he got into artist management, guiding the careers of Carl Douglas of “Kung Fu Fighting” fame and an up-and-coming producer, Alan Parsons who had previously engineered the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. In 1975, the two began collaborating creatively and the Alan Parsons Project was born. Over the next decade, the group released such popular prog rock albums as I Robot, Pyramid and Eye in the Sky. Overall, they sold in excess of 40 million albums. By the early ’90s, Woolfson and Parsons parted ways with Woolfson moving into musical theater. Woolfson was later diagnosed with cancer and died from the disease on December 2, 2009. He was 64.
