Odetta — Battle Hymn of the Republic

Okay, first things first: I love the movie Dogfight.

I mean, really LOVE the movie Dogfight. It was a very quiet, subtle story that not a lot of people paid attention to when it was released, but for me, it's one of the sweetest things ever put to film. I think it's the best movie River Phoenix ever made, and probably the best thing Lili Taylor will ever do. I turn into a big ball of mush every time I watch it. And it got me to pay more attention to folk music.

I can trace my love for "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "Silver Dagger" and "Sunflower River Blues" directly back to scenes from this film. And most of all, Odetta. Though we never actually hear from Odetta during the course of the film, Lili's character talks about her so rapturously that I was compelled to go check out her music — and as soon as I did, I was hooked.

Which leads us then, to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Everybody knows this song, and, like me, probably thought it was pretty hokey, the kind of thing that swells up to the end credits of Gone With the Wind or something like that. I think I even skipped over it the first few times I listened to her "Best of the Vanguard Years" CD. So imagine my surprise the first time I actually sat down and listened to Odetta singing this hokey old Civil War-era song . . . and got a little choked up by it. Her presentation of it, the forcefulness in her voice when she sings lines like "As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free" — I always imagined myself to be a bit too much of a modern-day cynic to be moved by lines like that. And maybe I mostly still am.

But not when those lines are sung by Odetta.