My first {or at least most influential} introduction to folk music-beyond children's rhymes and African American spirituals & gospel songs-was an Odetta album that my high school history teacher gave me around about 1964.

Even before I listened to that record, I was impressed by the photo on the album's cover of a brown skinned afro-wearing Black woman. Afros {wide or closely cropped "Black people's hair" worn without any chemical or heat treatment to straighten its tight curls} was a new style in those days. About three years later, I got up the nerve to have my shoulder length hair cut and wear it in an afro style. I've worn my hair in an afro style ever since {though I started out with an Angela Davis wide afro look, and now wear my hair short but not as short as I remember Odetta wearing her 'fro.}

One of the songs that I remember Odetta singing on that album my teacher gave me was "Sail, Away Ladies". I loved that song then. I love it still.

Odetta's version is quite similar but not exactly the same as the version found in Mudcat's Digital Tradition.

http://www.ibiblio.org/jimmy/folkden-wp/?m=199909 "McGuinn's Folk Den » 1999 » September" has an Mp3, the lyrics, and commentary about Odetta's performance of this song "in the mid '50s in the Gate of Horn, Chicago".

In Odetta's version {or at least in this one that McGuinn remembers, the chorus is "Don't you rock 'em die-de-o"

"Die-de-o" ist is probably a regional pronunciation for "daddy-o".

I checked out YouTube to see if anyone had posted a video of Odetta singing "Sail Away, Ladies". No such luck.

But YouTube had what I consider to be a VERY creative rendition of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deU6sio56BQ

Added: January 26, 2007; From: risingappalachia
"live warehouse show at Ghost Town Studios in Swannanoa, North Carolina"