Search - Odetta :: The Best Of Odetta - Ballads & Blues

Why, oh why, do they do this to us?

J. C Clark | Overland Park, KS United States | 12/10/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"OK. I'm annoyed.



Fact 1. The finest female voice in the pop/rock/soul/folk world from the mid 50s through the mid 60s belonged to Odetta.

Fact 2. Her record company knew this, and released heaps and mounds and scores of LPs.

Fact 3. These LPs have been re-released on CD in all manner of configuration.



Therefore, there are CDs that overlap others shamefully, exact same performances appearing here and there.



Why someone doesn't take her work and, as has been for many lesser artists, release 1955-57, 1958-59, or whatever, I cannot imagine. But they haven't. So I'm stuck buying largely duplicate CDs (or burning my own) to get all this early work in digital format.



So, this has much that is available elsewhere, but a few I didn't have before. And some pleasant surprises there. Again, this is fairly early Odetta, before she blossomed into the barn-burner of her glory days, but her tender voice and superlative natural guitar makes it a pleasant collection...as long as you don't have them all already."