What sad news this morning that the incredibly strange-voiced 60's folk singer Odetta has passed, just a month shy of her 78th birthday.
It seems like only yesterday I'd enjoyed her haunting, soulful voice on The 6th's "Wasp's Nests" CD singing "Waltzing Me All the Way Home" (click to hear).
One of my favorite references to Odetta is, from the film Hairspray by John Waters.
Hair hopper Ricki Lake and her beau seek refuge in the house of two beatniks played by Pia Zadora and The Cars' Ric Ocasek. Being the first beatniks they've ever met, the conversation goes like this...
Ricki: How do you get your hair so straight and so flat?
Pia: With an iron, man! l play my bongos, listen to Odetta, and then l iron my hair, dig?... When l'm high, l am Odetta!
1 comment:
"Hairspray" is one of my favorite movies, and not just because I went to the same high school as John Waters. The story isn't as fantastic as it seems. There really was an incident in Baltimore in the early 60s when an amusement park shut down rather than admit black customers. The real-life model for Tilted Acres was Gwynn Oak Park.
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