The musician who made Bob Dylan become a folk singer: “Something vital”
“All roads led to Bob Dylan,” Martha Wainwright once said of America’s most esteemed songwriter. It seems that nearly enough every musician would cite the folk legend as a vital inspiration, being the talent that has ignited generations of talent to come. But even he had to start someone. Just as Dylan provided that initial spark for his loyal fans, one artist did that for him.
Dylan’s praise has always been bestowed on artists like a golden crown. When he’s spoken about his love for artists like Joe Cocker or his support for George Harrison, it feels like he’s knighting them in some way. Perhaps that’s because he’s never been all that forthcoming about sharing his own personal tastes and, even less, his influences.
Instead, he seems to prefer to keep his music as this mythical thing. He never lets the world in on the meaning behind his songs, their inspirations or the faces or stories behind the world. He’s never shared much about his songwriting process. The closest his fans have ever got to witnessing a behind-the-scenes look at his life as an artist is through the many Bootleg series demos, hearing his slowly carving out a track through several takes, or in the Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue documentary where the artist is captured on tour.
However, there are a few artists that Dylan has admitted had a huge impact on him as a music maker, lyric writer, and fan. One of them was Woody Guthrie, as he called himself a self-confessed “Woody Guthrie jukebox”. But while Guthrie inspired his writing, there was another artist who inspired him to become a folk singer.
“The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta,” he told Playboy. “I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. That was in ’58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson.”
Often referred to as ‘the voice of the Civil Rights Movement’, Odetta’s impact on not only Dylan but the whole folk or music world is impossible to understate. She was a pioneering figure merging folk tradition with blues, protesting lyrics and jazz attitude. Alongside the likes of Joan Baez and later Dylan himself, she was one of the most important figures of the folk revival that happened in the 1950s and ‘60s.
To Dyaln, her album was imbued with something special, calling it “Just something vital and personal.” From that first moment he heard Odetta’s voice, Dylan was moved to pick up an acoustic guitar and keep things simple. With no bells and whistles beyond her pure talent, Odetta taught Dylan that good lyrics and a good melody were all he would need.
But beyond singing, Odetta also helped teach Dylan how to play his instrument. “I learned all the songs on that record. It was her first, and the songs were ‘Mule Skinner’, ‘Jack of Diamonds’, ‘Water Boy’, ‘Buked and Scorned’,” he said. Through learning her work, he got to grips with her more classic folk, finger-picked styling that he’d then make his signature on his earliest releases.
Joan Baez was a huge fan too, stating, “Odetta was a goddess. Her passion moved me. I learned everything she sang.” So Dylan’s love for Odetta not only inspired him to become a folk star, but connected him to his peers as part of a collective folk revival force.
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