Odetta performed at The Mystic Soeaport Maritime Music Festival back 10 or so yrs ago. I was performing at that same festival as well. Well Odetta has been one of my folk hero's since the 60's & I was thrilled that I was on the same performers list as she was, quite exciting for me. What a let down when I heard her, I left the stage area in the middle of her performance after waiting for it to get better, I was nearly in tears. I had seen her a number of times but only way back in the 60's, her stage preformence was so much the same that I could almost finish her lines as she spoke. I have no idea why she was at a sea music fest ot begin with, that not being her aerea of speciality but I'm hoping that was the reason she may have relied upon such an old & familiar showing.

Sorry Azizi, but though I've loved Odetta going but to my teens I said what I felt needing saying. Saying that I should also say that I seen & heard most of the others I've mentioned, The Georgia Sea Island Singers in their various line ups, the Manhanden Chanteymen (I've heard recently that they are mostly dying off) the Buckinham Lining Bar Gang (they may be dying off to, I don't know)< Kim & Reggie Harris (who I didn't mention but someone lese did), got to hear a prison gang perform at one of the last of the early Newport Folk Festivals & I don't think that I can say how moving these groups were. I grew up with a lot of the other R&B & older Blues folks mentioned but when it comes to those that are singing "from the field" as it were, there is no greater human emotion felt, musically, than when in the mists of the singers & songs that helped a group, any group with the survival & the lifting of their human condition. I don't know why folks don't go more often tpo the field recording or the source singers when they're looking for the core of a music that their trying on for a fit.


Another group I neglected that some one mentioned is the Georgia Sea Island Singers . There are a few CD's featuring them one is on the Lomax collecion; "Southern Journey/Earliest Times"-Georgia Sea Island Songs for Everyday Living again on Rounder 1998 & out on New World Records "Georgia Sea Island Songs"

Another from the prison work gangs that I missed above is "Prison Worksongs" recorded at Angola State Prions, Lousiana, this is on Arhoolie CD#448 & was recorded by Dr Harry Oster 1959. This is a classic.

Barry