"Odetta, a titan of American folk music, demonstrated time and again that her talent transcended any one style. She died Dec. 2, 2008, at 77. Odetta was a folk icon, but her music included blues, jazz, spirituals, Appalachian songs and English folk songs. Her 27th solo album, ''Blues Everywhere I Go' (2000), paid homage to the great blueswomen of the ‘20s and ‘30s: Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace and Memphis Minnie.
'''One of the many reasons I wanted to do the blues album is that I get pretty fed up with stereotyping of our black community as being represented by prurient sex or 'I'm gonna shoot you or I'm gonna cut you,' she said in a phone conversation from her home in New York in July 2000. ''There was blues in the '20s and '30s that dealt with society's foot stepping on our throats.'"
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