Review: Odetta - My Eyes Have Seen (1959)
Tracks: 1) Poor Little Jesus; 2) Bald Headed Woman; 3) Motherless Children; 4) I Knew Where I’m Going; 5) The Foggy Dew; 6) I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain / Water Boy; 7) Ox-Driver Song; 8) Down On Me; 9) Saro Jane; 10) Three Pigs; 11) No More Cane On The Brazos; 12) Jumpin’ Judy; 13) Battle Hymn Of The Republic.
REVIEW
As hard as it is to even think about introducing any kinds of change to an established musical formula, particularly a «holy formula» where the slightest tweak may bring on accusations of selling out, losing touch with The Spirit, betraying one’s own authenticity, etc. — listening to Odetta’s third LP clearly shows signs of such artistic uneasiness; at the very least, there is a desire to use the recording studio as a workbench for doing the old schtick in different ways. Particularly by 1959, when she’d worked her way up to a certain level of recognition and acceptance — and when even the big music business began to realize that there might actually be some future in the neo-folk revival and in social protest (at least, as long as its terms were to be stated «politely» and «accurately»).
Thus it was that for her third album, Odetta had secured a contract with Vanguard Records, one of the leading independent labels of the day — and got to be promoted by none other than Harry Belafonte himself, who not only arranged for her to appear on his TV show, but also supplied a detailed set of liner notes for the LP. Although most of the recordings were still made by Odetta in the sole company of Bill Lee on bass, a few of the tracks totally went out of their way to add a choir, with choral arrangements by professional conductor, arranger, and producer Milt Okun — who’d already worked with Belafonte before, and would go on to be largely responsible for the sweet sounds of folksies from Peter, Paul & Mary to John Denver... yes, not the best possible reputation, I know, but any producer’s angle of corniness is usually a derivative of the artist’s readiness to accept that corniness, and on this particular occasion, Odetta was not going to accept any sentimental flack from anybody, so Okun’s choral additions work in favor of the songs, not against them.
Actually, the biggest difference of My Eyes Have Seen from Odetta’s LPs on the Tradition label is not the addition of a choir, but a drastic change in production style. On those earlier albums, the music was always in your face: sit Odetta as close to the microphones as possible and have that acoustic guitar and that powerful, dead-man-rousing vocal boom right out into your living room. Here, the very second that ‘Poor Little Jesus’ kicks things off, you get the impression that the lady is singing from a cave — suddenly, there’s an echoey distance between her and you, one that was not even vaguely hinted at by anything she’d previously done. Some might see this as an unnecessary distraction (and rather route for the kind of version that she performed, for instance, on the Ed Sullivan show), but artistically, the decision is perfectly sensible — having Odetta adopt this Moses-on-the-Mountain approach to her delivery subtly emphasizes her accumulated status of a «prophet» of the folk movement, and she handles the responsibility well enough.
I do not know of too many renditions of the ‘Poor Little Jesus’ spiritual prior to Odetta, but I do know that her version is easily my favorite of everything I did hear; compare it, for instance, with the Weavers’ version from 1951, just to see how Odetta, with her fast tempo, booming voice, and heavy emphasis on the word "shame" throughout, turns the song from a «watch our sorrow turn to joy» rumination into a diatribe on the world’s senseless cruelty and stupidity. She even dispenses with the last joyful verse altogether; for Odetta’s own poor little Jesus, there is no escape from the ‘pity and the shame’, not ever — the song’s two minutes cut in and cut off as abruptly as possible, as if it were just two minutes of radio interference from a dimension of eternal pain into our own, casually untroubled, universe. It’s a masterful gesture which, in such a short while, manages to bring up a state of poignant gospel ecstasy that not even Mahalia Jackson herself could always be capable of, at least not on such short notice. And it sets an excellent tone for the album — which rarely rises to the exact same heights as the opener, but still remains permeated by the same intense Biblical flavor until the very end.
In addition to myself, I know for definite sure of at least one other person who remained impressed with it — not Joan Baez or Bob Dylan or John Denver or even your grandmother, but, believe it or not, the famous record producer Shel Talmy, he of the ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘My Generation’ fame. And you don’t even need him to go on record saying it (although he did): all you have to do is compare the fact that My Eyes Have Seen You includes two titles with the word "bald" in them (‘Bald Headed Woman’ and ‘I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain’) with the fact that those exact two songs with the exact same titles — but credited to Shel Talmy himself!! — would five years later be included on the self-titled debut album by the Kinks. (The Who would also record ‘Bald Headed Woman’, but not ‘Bald Mountain’). Talmy (who, these days, runs an extremely interesting and useful set of mini-memoirs about rock music’s golden days on his FB page) uses the meek apology nowadays that everybody was assuming songwriting credit for traditional material in those days, but I remember quite vividly how, in my own young and innocent days, when «Odetta» was at best a name I came across in a pulpy Bob Dylan biography, I used to form this mental image of Shel Talmy as a pervy little guy with a bald fetish, writing all that stupid material for his artists to make them spread his "Shel ‘Bald Is Good’ Talmy" religion all over the world... yes, children, misattribution corrupts the correctness of the world’s image in your heads, and that’s way worse than Shel Talmy buying himself a new jet plane from the royalties off an old folk tune he claimed for his own one day.
Anyway, the connection between Odetta and Shel Talmy is rather accidental — as is her unexpected «influence» on the early Kinks and Who — but it is a little sad that, for instance, as of today, the Wikipedia page for ‘Bald Headed Woman’ does not even mention the Odetta version, which is arguably the finest of all the ones I have heard. For starters, it is delivered strictly a cappella, with just the same cavernous sound of handclaps setting off the beat for Odetta to follow, reminding us that the tune is essentially a work song, partly nonsensical and partly poignant ("I don’t want no cold iron shackles / ’Round my legs, lord, well a-round my legs"). Just about every subsequent rendition, with the possible exception of Harry Belafonte’s, loses that poignancy by turning the work song into a generic pop-rock tune — neither the Kinks nor the Who, I believe, were truly understanding what they were singing about here; Odetta most certainly does understand.
She then does an even more interesting thing with the next number, ‘Motherless Children’, which begins lyrically like a cover of Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Mother’s Children Have A Hard Time’, then starts sucking in words from all over the place, including ‘This Train Is Bound For Glory’ and ‘Dig My Grave With A Silver Spade’, gradually gaining in gospel intensity as the choir solidifies around Odetta and she starts dropping casual hallelujah bombs to the left and right. It’s captivating, moving, and at the same time oddly and fiercely post-modernist, a meat grinder of a tune showing that the student is no longer afraid to fiddle around with the classics and is, in fact, trying to find a new angle of perception, for instance, one under which the emotion of despair and the emotion of joy seem to flash with one and the same color — the color of spiritual ecstasy. This is a short performance, just barely over two minutes, which lends itself to any interpretation: it may be about celebrating the coming of the Lord, or it might be about the ground swallowing us all in the Apocalypse. You just have to tilt your head a little to one side — or another. This train don’t carry no literalists, hallelujah.
And this is just the first three songs, though it’s not getting much better than the opening. The Irish portion of the record comes next; as the tempo slows down to make way for the romance of ‘I Know Where I’m Going’, Odetta gets a little too lyrical for me (Judy Collins probably works better for this kind of material), but ‘The Foggy Dew’ is quite masterful at least in terms of how it starts out — Odetta and Bill Lee really work as a team here, she supplying the fast rhythm trills, rolling over one another like ocean waves or gusts of wind, he providing an overtone-rich earthy foundation which colors your entire living space with black smoke. That the subject of struggle for Irish independence would find its natural place along the subject of struggle for African-American emancipation should hardly be of any wonder; what is really unpredictable is the ghostly, ominous beauty of that arrangement, most of which hangs on Bill Lee’s shoulders. Remember that, aspiring singer-songwriters: do not underestimate the value of a professional bass player on the team.
On the second side of the LP, highlights include the fast-paced ‘Ox-Driver Song’, where Odetta’s choir does its best to impersonate the ox-drivers (and sometimes the oxen, I guess); the great old pessimist anthem ‘Down On Me’ (I think that this is probably the version that must have impressed itself on the memory of a young Janis Joplin); and a really groovy, relaxed, chill-out rendition of ‘Ain’t No More Cane On The Brazos’ which must have struck a note with Bob Dylan and through that would later be passed on to The Band. Odetta’s rather straight-faced sense of humor shows up on the moralistic tale of ‘Three Pigs’ (not a highlight, but works as a lightweight interlude); and her fight-for-the-right colors are hoisted high up on the closing ‘Battle Hymn Of The Republic’, which is a bit too much for me to take (I have a real hard time with any tune to which you are supposed to stand up and salute) but at least when it is Odetta who sings "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" it’s much preferable to, you know... Whitney Houston?
The bottomline is that My Eyes Have Seen was as solid a claim for Odetta in 1959 as could be imagined from a folk artist still unwilling to cross that major line separating the interpreter from the creator — but perfectly willing to be as creative with her interpretations as physically possible. The powerhouse vocals; the diversity of the material and the lyrical and melodic liberties taken with it; the subtle atmospheric touches introduced by the production and the addition of vocal choirs — Odetta here was becoming just a wee bit too imposing for the narrow confines of Greenwich Village, entering what was perhaps her most ambitious, if also very brief, period in the music business. This was, perhaps, the perfect time for her to try and start writing her own songs, but somehow that particular impulse never came, or perhaps she was suppressing it herself out of fear of taking on way too much responsibility. The first Bob Dylan she would never be...
Ironically, even though all these little touches, in my opinion, easily make this not simply the best Odetta album from the 1950s, but also the most accessible one — much easier to sit through for a non-committed hardcore folkie — this is usually the point at which even the professional nostalgic music lover’s patience for Odetta ends; spurred on by praise from Dylan or from the likes of Joan Baez, people go and try out Sings Ballads And Blues, put the «Mission Accomplished» check mark in the box and never return — this is why, for instance, on RateYourMusic this LP has something like ten times less ratings than Odetta’s debut. This is, in my opinion, a serious misunderstanding for which the critical press should be blamed. While it is true that much, if not most, of the Greenwich Village scene pre-Dylan today constitutes only historical interest, its best representatives were not necessarily just clueless mofos whose inadequate love for American soil had made them deaf and blind to whatever was going on in the world around them — some of them at least had their own intuitions and world views and musical sensitivities, and there were curious stories of artistic growth and unpredictable surprises and... whatever, just listen to the album and hopefully you’ll see what I mean.