AUTHOR’S NOTE

Odetta is based on hundreds of hours of interviews I conducted over a period of four years with more than seventy-five people, including friends, loved ones, fellow musicians, and music promoters; information I culled from thousands of newspaper clippings, scores of archival interviews, legal documents, and Odetta’s personal papers, which are currently housed at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and a heartfelt listening to the music that gushed like wildfire from her troubled soul. Odetta gave hundreds of interviews over the course of her half-century career in show business, but she had difficulty remembering names and dates, and she didn’t keep detailed diaries that we know of. Where no shred of paper spelled out her itinerary or her feelings about a given topic, I relied on the testimony of those who knew her and the revelation of her art to tell her story. I hope the reader finds, as I did, much to admire in her lifelong search for freedom.