Heard this lullabye whilr rocking my baby to sleep and its been stuck in my head only just found out its orgin irs beautiful! I pray for that little baby in the meadow and my heart aches as a mother ! This song is so deep and beautiful! If I could go back in time and help the young mama this song is about i would hold her baby and rock it to sleep!😭 now I'm crying listening to her voice. The baby this song is about is so loved!
@@N0R3M4C It doesn't mean 18Windwalker was IN high school at the time! They just traveled physically to the high school building to see the concert. They might have been 70 years old at the time!
Yes, she's a mammy for the white children whom she feeds whilst her own is alone crying mammy. It is a doleful song, a lullaby sung to the white child who can dream of little horses.
When everything else fails, Odettas rendition relaxes her and helps her drift of to sleep. Such a captivating voice. Beautiful storytelling of a heartbreaking story.
this makes me miss my grandmother.. you the know that one person who loved with conditions... back when you were a child and you thought you were loved without conditions and you felt you could have all the little horses.. yea this song makes me miss that safe, safe feeling you had a child and all those limitless dreams that didn't seem like dreams but just a matter of time ... i want to go back to those days..
Aliyah Z Quite right Aaliyah,an immensely talented and pure Musician, with a voice and range of stunning quality. I was introduced to her Music with her interpretation of Dylan, about 50 years ago. Her heart was in the right place too.
IMO...the best of all the “folk music” artists of the period. Phenomenal vocal range and emotional coloration...and a damn good guitarist to boot. Her percussive style was almost more rock and roll than a blatant display of virtuosity. Interestingly, her Wikipedia bio makes no mention of when she first picked up the guitar since she came for a classical voice background. IMO, Odetta’’s “underrated” status may stem in part to the fact that Albert Grossman never managed to facilitate a “hit” record for Odetta...a lifelong regret for him...during that brief late-50s to late-60 periods when “folk musicians” regularly produced radio-ready singles and many were hits on mainstream radio. Interestingly, I didn’t think she ever appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show but did make it onto Johnny Cash and sang gospel on Tennessee Ernie Ford . Phenomenal artist and there is a new well reviewed bio out on her.
NOW THATS HOW YA SANG THIS SONG .. even tho lyrics vary & Ive got stanzas Ive never heard anyone else sing, this lady embues the entire melody with a subtle sorrow that was always there when I first heard it over 50yrs ago (I was10) sung by my first hero - an old black lady in Alabama. Her name was Snow. I adored her & still do. Lawdy Lawd Lawd, How she sang this song .. Mmm mm mm. She had her 12yro son write down the lyrics for me - cause she was denied an education & couldnt write. But ooohh how she could sing. She "flew over Jordan" a long time ago .. but I shall always Love me my Snow!
Great rendition! I heard this wonderful woman sing this song some forty or more years ago at The Gate of Horn in Chicago. Part of why I decided folk music, including her music, had to be an important part of my life.
Thanks for putting this wonderful woman, this wonderful voice, and this wonderful song here on RUclips. A service to humanity. I had totally forgotten Odetta ... oh ... 50 or so. And now I've re-discovered her. Thanks again.
Can't believe I happened to watch and listen to this wonderful woman at a festival in Vienna back in '82. Suppose I didn't quite knew to appreciate her then, being just over 20 years old (me, not her). But I surely do now.
Absolutely haunting rendition of an incredibly meaningful song. I cry every time I hear it, and will sing it the rest of my life. This is not just a beautiful song, but one that plays the heart strings in a minor key. I am smitten.
@Broblem12 This is a special, tender song, for parents and grandparents. I am 70. I refer to those days as "gentler times". In my late teens I started collecting all of her LPs, prompted by her electric rendition of Water Boy in the second double LP by Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall (1959). I was then lucky enough to see her live in Adelaide (Australia) in '66. Around that time she and Joan Baez were the top ladies in folk. Strikingly different but both beautiful ladies with beautiful voices.
Oh my gosh... I can't contain her soul in my heart... it's so beautiful beyond words!! I try to cling to her ... but I fail...there will never ever be a voice like this again...
Since I'm of an age, would you believe, pre-date T.V.! first we had was radio - vinyl "crackle" sure okay with me, especially to hear the Incomparable Odetta! Many thanks for posting - and I think I remember checking this vinyl recording out from the main branch of our public library many a long year gone!
Thank you! I love Porgy and Bess, have not heard the Joplin cover. Will look for it and the Solomon Islands song. I was fortunate, as a youngster, to hear the original Porgy, Todd Duncan, sing "Bess, You is my woman, now. Will never forget it. (As you can guess, I am VERY old.) Thank you for the information. C.
I remember how electrifying it was to hear this coming from the same singer as the one who performed "God's Gonna Cut You Down." What a leap of styles! And both done so well, for one so young. Only one Odetta.
Ceb2633, I can't thank you enough for bringing this beauty back out into the light. Heartstopping, it is. But there are at least two others that (for me at least; ymmv) strike right to the heart, too: The Gershwin classic, "Summertime" (from Porgy and Bess), especially the Janis Joplin covers; and the Solomon Islands song, "Rorogwela," best known in these parts for the Deep Forest cover (which has a stunning video, too). I can't listen to any of them without totally losing it.
This is and always will be the most amazing version of this , I would invite anyone who likes this to listen to the version by current 93, it's also very good
I grew up listening to Paul Robeson. My mother went to hear him in concert and got caught in the Poughkeepsie riots against him, against "Communists, Black people, Jews". And eventually heard hm sing at another concert.
Perfect version of this deeply meaningful song. Odetta of course is wonderful. I hope people understand the underlying message of this song. It is about a black woman who is a slave, in the American South , tending to a white baby from a rich white family. While she must tend to this baby, her own baby is left alone, crying for her, and she cannot attend to her own precious child. Folk songs help us remember history....
I'm thinking of the another black spiritual that begins, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,...", and how terribly sad to think her own baby waits crying...mother has two arms and could hold two babies, black and white, but was that not allowed? The cruelty of slavery was in the those small moments too. I want to hear nothing of an NPR story in which a certain white benevolence was "good" for the slaves (still trying to be revived by modern whites in the South), and that many slave and plantation owners "loved" their slaves. We know there is no real love in such beliefs.
Yes, I agree. Nothing "benevolent" in slavery. Slavery was an unmitigated cruelty. I recommend a powerful book, "Archetypal Grief: Slavery's Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss", by Fanny Brewster, Routledge, 2019. I have an advance copy, because I wrote one of the back cover endorsements. @@DaStoneboat
@@MerleHeidi Thank you for the reference, I'll go to Amazon or B&N. I read Jung, I'm a social worker, and loss of childhood through trauma is a major interest. A book I'd recommend for a sense of national trauma in families, caused by our peculiar kind of capitalist world aggression, is, "My Name is Chellis, and I'm in Recovery From Western Civilization," by Chellis Glendinning, PhD.
Thank you for posting this. It's really haunting and sad. My mom used to sing it to me when I was a child. I didn't know its history until now when I wikipedia'd it. I'd actually never heard of Odetta, but I am going to go look her up now. This is really great.
My mom did also. I woke up dreaming this and was humming this tune to google and that's how I landed here. Mum is past now so I must have been dreaming about her.
awwww :) oh my goodness....wow...how could I forget this? I found it in an old book when I was younger and I used to play it ( guitar) and sing it but.........geez....Odetta just took it beyond the universe. Makes me want to cry. .."blacks and bays,,dapples n grays,,,," I gotta try to remember the chords and play this again. Thank you for posting. xx Peace and much love I hope for ya. "Jenny"
@NoRosesForMe I feel the same way...always loved her and her big guitar, used to sing this to my children but left out the saddest parts. Peace and love to you. C.
Odetta has always fascinated me. A great stylist with her wonderful guitar technique. I think her "Red Clay Country" may be on your same LP, with her great double stroke guitar accompaniment. Cordially, John
I believe this is the original. Glad someone likes the crackling sound besides me. It is from a fifty year old collection called "Folk Song and Minstraly" I think I spelled that wrong. Thanks for posting.
sound like when I was a daycare worker and didn't had to be with rich bratty kids and when I came home to my child, I was so worn out that I couldn't really take care of her as well as the rich kids. breaks my heart thinking about my minimum wage nightmare of a job, and believe me those parents do not even give a **&& about their own kids or you.
@Aleksei5055 Yes, to go back to times we now miss as well those we no longer have in our lives. Safe, warm, having family of all sorts that care about us deeply in words and deeds and life and living seemed so full of possibilities. I hope and pray that there are and yet will be days or even moments that such experiences yet may happen for you and well as I in some fashion. Blessing and best wishes to you. Brian A reply would be welcome if and as you wish. I appreciate your post.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Heard this lullabye whilr rocking my baby to sleep and its been stuck in my head only just found out its orgin irs beautiful! I pray for that little baby in the meadow and my heart aches as a mother ! This song is so deep and beautiful! If I could go back in time and help the young mama this song is about i would hold her baby and rock it to sleep!😭 now I'm crying listening to her voice. The baby this song is about is so loved!
I was blessed with seeing her in a small venue at a local high school, with her that night was Elizabeth Cotton... quite an epic night.
holy dooley are you still alive?
@@N0R3M4C It doesn't mean 18Windwalker was IN high school at the time! They just traveled physically to the high school building to see the concert. They might have been 70 years old at the time!
I bet friend
Still gives me chills, too. I think the saddest lullaby ever sung.
C.
Yes, she's a mammy for the white children whom she feeds whilst her own is alone crying mammy. It is a doleful song, a lullaby sung to the white child who can dream of little horses.
Odetta was a friend of my parents. She sng this song to me putting me to sleep at 4 years old, I am now 77.
When everything else fails, Odettas rendition relaxes her and helps her drift of to sleep. Such a captivating voice. Beautiful storytelling of a heartbreaking story.
Beautiful beyond words. My favorite Odetta song with "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child".
this makes me miss my grandmother.. you the know that one person who loved with conditions... back when you were a child and you thought you were loved without conditions and you felt you could have all the little horses.. yea this song makes me miss that safe, safe feeling you had a child and all those limitless dreams that didn't seem like dreams but just a matter of time ... i want to go back to those days..
This woman was amazing. Can't believe she's still underrated.
Aliyah Z Quite right Aaliyah,an immensely talented and pure Musician, with a voice and range of stunning quality.
I was introduced to her Music with her interpretation of Dylan, about 50 years ago.
Her heart was in the right place too.
Native Americans didn’t get credit from what “art” They make.
IMO...the best of all the “folk music” artists of the period. Phenomenal vocal range and emotional coloration...and a damn good guitarist to boot. Her percussive style was almost more rock and roll than a blatant display of virtuosity. Interestingly, her Wikipedia bio makes no mention of when she first picked up the guitar since she came for a classical voice background. IMO, Odetta’’s “underrated” status may stem in part to the fact that Albert Grossman never managed to facilitate a “hit” record for Odetta...a lifelong regret for him...during that brief late-50s to late-60 periods when “folk musicians” regularly produced radio-ready singles and many were hits on mainstream radio. Interestingly, I didn’t think she ever appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show but did make it onto Johnny Cash and sang gospel on Tennessee Ernie Ford .
Phenomenal artist and there is a new well reviewed bio out on her.
@@summergacha5991 Buffy Sainte Marie is one of the rare ones. I adore her.
@skihalli
If you were as old as this recording, you would crackle, too. Keep vinyl for 50 years, it tends to do that, like my joints.
C.
NOW THATS HOW YA SANG THIS SONG .. even tho lyrics vary & Ive got stanzas Ive never heard anyone else sing, this lady embues the entire melody with a subtle sorrow that was always there when I first heard it over 50yrs ago (I was10) sung by my first hero - an old black lady in Alabama. Her name was Snow. I adored her & still do. Lawdy Lawd Lawd, How she sang this song .. Mmm mm mm. She had her 12yro son write down the lyrics for me - cause she was denied an education & couldnt write. But ooohh how she could sing. She "flew over Jordan" a long time ago .. but I shall always Love me my Snow!
A very moving story.
Brett, are you going to share those verses? Don't let them be lost...❤
Can you remember the verses your Snow used to sing to you when you were 10 years old in Alabama?
Great rendition! I heard this wonderful woman sing this song some forty or more years ago at The Gate of Horn in Chicago. Part of why I decided folk music, including her music, had to be an important part of my life.
My daughter sang some part of this song to me and I don’t know where she learned it from and when she saying it to me and brought tears to my eyes
I've been listening to this since I was 3, now at 59, it brings me back to those years.
My God, she's extraordinary. She sings right out of her soul.
Thanks for putting this wonderful woman, this wonderful voice, and this wonderful song here on RUclips. A service to humanity. I had totally forgotten Odetta ... oh ... 50 or so. And now I've re-discovered her. Thanks again.
Can't believe I happened to watch and listen to this wonderful woman at a festival in Vienna back in '82. Suppose I didn't quite knew to appreciate her then, being just over 20 years old (me, not her). But I surely do now.
Absolutely haunting rendition of an incredibly meaningful song. I cry every time I hear it, and will sing it the rest of my life. This is not just a beautiful song, but one that plays the heart strings in a minor key. I am smitten.
Love this amazing lullaby sung by Odetta..
Getting goose bumbs while thinking about the cotton fields..
@Broblem12 This is a special, tender song, for parents and grandparents. I am 70. I refer to those days as "gentler times". In my late teens I started collecting all of her LPs, prompted by her electric rendition of Water Boy in the second double LP by Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall (1959). I was then lucky enough to see her live in Adelaide (Australia) in '66. Around that time she and Joan Baez were the top ladies in folk. Strikingly different but both beautiful ladies with beautiful voices.
Years ago, my mom had a box of LP's called "Folk", and this was on one record. I listened over and over. She is so soulful...
Me and my brother fall
Asleep listening to her amazing voice
Thank you so much! We had this when I was young - I thought I remembered her voice, but I didn't! Her singing sends shivers right through me.
Extraordinary! What a voice!
This song always brings tears to my eyes. Such a beautiful melody and bittersweet story. I love singing song to my daughter.
Oh my gosh... I can't contain her soul in my heart... it's so beautiful beyond words!! I try to cling to her ... but I fail...there will never ever be a voice like this again...
Odetta Rules. I just love her.
Since I'm of an age, would you believe, pre-date T.V.! first we had was radio - vinyl "crackle" sure okay with me, especially to hear the Incomparable Odetta! Many thanks for posting - and I think I remember checking this vinyl recording out from the main branch of our public library many a long year gone!
I know this is an old comment, but I just wanted to say, I love the white noise on records, especially the ones that were well loved and played often.
Thank you. Seriously, thank you. This is gorgeous. I pray you're you're able to keep it for another 50 years.
Thank you! I love Porgy and Bess, have not heard the Joplin cover. Will look for it and the Solomon Islands song. I was fortunate, as a youngster, to hear the original Porgy, Todd Duncan, sing "Bess, You is my woman, now. Will never forget it. (As you can guess, I am VERY old.)
Thank you for the information.
C.
I remember how electrifying it was to hear this coming from the same singer as the one who performed "God's Gonna Cut You Down." What a leap of styles! And both done so well, for one so young. Only one Odetta.
will aways love your voice it will never die
This made me cry. It is such a beautiful sad lullaby.
This is the closest lyrics to what my mom used to sing to me and what I sing to my kids
Ceb2633, I can't thank you enough for bringing this beauty back out into the light.
Heartstopping, it is.
But there are at least two others that (for me at least; ymmv) strike right to the heart, too:
The Gershwin classic, "Summertime" (from Porgy and Bess), especially the Janis Joplin covers;
and
the Solomon Islands song, "Rorogwela," best known in these parts for the Deep Forest cover (which has a stunning video, too).
I can't listen to any of them without totally losing it.
This is and always will be the most amazing version of this , I would invite anyone who likes this to listen to the version by current 93, it's also very good
Makes me cry... so beautiful❤
What a gem, thank you. I've recently been on a Paul Robeson kick, and Odetta oddly feels like an apt transition. Thanks for uploading.
I grew up listening to Paul Robeson. My mother went to hear him in concert and got caught in the Poughkeepsie riots against him, against "Communists, Black people, Jews". And eventually heard hm sing at another concert.
Perfect version of this deeply meaningful song. Odetta of course is wonderful. I hope people understand the underlying message of this song. It is about a black woman who is a slave, in the American South , tending to a white baby from a rich white family. While she must tend to this baby, her own baby is left alone, crying for her, and she cannot attend to her own precious child. Folk songs help us remember history....
I'm thinking of the another black spiritual that begins, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,...", and how terribly sad to think her own baby waits crying...mother has two arms and could hold two babies, black and white, but was that not allowed? The cruelty of slavery was in the those small moments too. I want to hear nothing of an NPR story in which a certain white benevolence was "good" for the slaves (still trying to be revived by modern whites in the South), and that many slave and plantation owners "loved" their slaves. We know there is no real love in such beliefs.
Yes, I agree. Nothing "benevolent" in slavery. Slavery was an unmitigated cruelty. I recommend a powerful book, "Archetypal Grief: Slavery's Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss", by Fanny Brewster, Routledge, 2019. I have an advance copy, because I wrote one of the back cover endorsements. @@DaStoneboat
@@MerleHeidi Thank you for the reference, I'll go to Amazon or B&N. I read Jung, I'm a social worker, and loss of childhood through trauma is a major interest. A book I'd recommend for a sense of national trauma in families, caused by our peculiar kind of capitalist world aggression, is, "My Name is Chellis, and I'm in Recovery From Western Civilization," by Chellis Glendinning, PhD.
Please read my book..."Autobiograpy of an American Orphan"
@@DaStoneboat Thanks, Barry.Resonance! I'm a psychoanalyst.
Oh. ):
Man, all my favorite childhood songs...
This is my favorite version! Thanks for posting.
Thank you for posting this. It's really haunting and sad. My mom used to sing it to me when I was a child. I didn't know its history until now when I wikipedia'd it. I'd actually never heard of Odetta, but I am going to go look her up now. This is really great.
My mom did also. I woke up dreaming this and was humming this tune to google and that's how I landed here. Mum is past now so I must have been dreaming about her.
Wikipedia is not the arbiter of truth and knowledge
@@yeetnama9094 no, but it does usually include links to sources of truth and knowledge.
@@dreamcatcherjulie1My God, I woke up yesterday from singing this song to someone in a dream and today he said something that made me cry. ❤
@@globalheartwarming our dreams are very mysterious...
awwww :) oh my goodness....wow...how could I forget this? I found it in an old book when I was younger and I used to play it ( guitar) and sing it but.........geez....Odetta just took it beyond the universe. Makes me want to cry. .."blacks and bays,,dapples n grays,,,," I gotta try to remember the chords and play this again. Thank you for posting. xx Peace and much love I hope for ya. "Jenny"
What a beautiful rendition. What a beautiful voice.
wonderful! what a treasure ~ thank you!
So powerful; every time I hear it.
So beautiful!
@NoRosesForMe
I feel the same way...always loved her and her big guitar, used to sing this to my children but left out the saddest parts. Peace and love to you.
C.
Odetta has always fascinated me. A great stylist with her wonderful guitar technique. I think her "Red Clay Country" may be on your same LP, with her great double stroke guitar accompaniment. Cordially, John
I believe this is the original. Glad someone likes the crackling sound besides me. It is from a fifty year old collection called "Folk Song and Minstraly" I think I spelled that wrong. Thanks for posting.
In retrospect, I think you are right. Of course, they have heard it many times since and still love it.
C.
Love it!!
Oh. Wow. Just... wow.
Beautiful.
Gave me chills
Beautifully done.
Awesome Thank you
love the crackles....love them!
She some special woman for me and rest of world me hope be or try to be good as she
So haunting.
odetta was the best.
Cortana brought me. Thanks.
Thank you. I have an old Paul Robeson on this channel. He was a fascinating man, wonderful voice, fine actor, too.
"Way down yonder in the meadow
Lies my poor little babe
Bees and the butterflies pickin' on his eyes
Poor little thing is cryin' (for) mammy""
Haunting.
So endearing
@ceb2633
Thanks for posting this from the great Odetta. By the way, I liked your reply to skihalli. You sure told him/her the way it is!
You are very welcome. She is a one of a kind.
Tell me about it. I have a bunch of Odetta's L.P.s: Vanguard, Riverside and RCA. One of the greatest folk singers of all time.
Amazi
I my heart she will be.
Thank you greysparrow68. Blessings to you as well.
Here Here.
@skihalli it's all about that crackle crackle psst sir. good day.
I will do my best. I also think this is an incredible lullaby.
C.
awesome! 5*
@mxgirl2007 yes and in this case, there is clear reference to the death of her own child.
Alltid i mitt hjärta hoppas jag hon vill vara
Coil & current 93.
oh...!
Calexico does an amazing version of this song!!
sound like when I was a daycare worker and didn't had to be with rich bratty kids and when I came home to my child, I was so worn out that I couldn't really take care of her as well as the rich kids. breaks my heart thinking about my minimum wage nightmare of a job, and believe me those parents do not even give a **&& about their own kids or you.
That's actually not far off from the origins of the song itself. It's heartbreaking.
@Aleksei5055 Yes, to go back to times we now miss as well those we no longer have in our lives. Safe, warm, having family of all sorts that care about us deeply in words and deeds and life and living seemed so full of possibilities. I hope and pray that there are and yet will be days or even moments that such experiences yet may happen for you and well as I in some fashion. Blessing and best wishes to you. Brian A reply would be welcome if and as you wish. I appreciate your post.
Does anyone know where I could find tabs for this? Or even just the chords?
chordify.net/chords/odetta-all-the-pretty-little-horses-ceb2633
Knowing the politics behind the song makes is absolutely heartbreaking.
WTF I thout it was a woman