by Leonard “Boots” Jaffee

Shaker Village was a summer camp in upstate New York were teens could learn Shaker history and crafts, and every once in a while , the owners; Jerry and Cybil Count had a lot of friends that were in the music business. Happy and Artie Traum, folkies and friends of the camp owners used to come up. One day we were having a big celebration in our large barn. and a woman by the name of Odetta, strikingly beautiful, black woman, folk singer who I had heard of and loved her music, showed up. She was visiting and she stayed for the festivities we were having at the end of the workday.

During the party we had a little jail. It was just a bunch of hay bales that were set up in a little box. And if you committed some kind of crime, and to this day I don't know what kind of crime I imposed on Odetta, but if you were accused of a crime you were sent to jail until you did restitution for your crime. So I had asked Odetta to sing "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" for me so she could find her way out of jail. She said she didn't know the song. I knew she had to know the song. Every folky knew that song. But she was just trying to get out of singing. But eventually she sang it. She sang it more beautifully than I had ever heard. And of course we let her out of jail and we became buddies and we hung out for the rest of the night.

At the end of the night, after we ended up talking, we realized she lived in New York, I lived in New York, and we should get together. So we made arrangements, switched phone numbers and addresses. I tried calling her at the end of the summer but Odetta was not very big on phones or mail. If you caught her, you caught her. If you didn't, you didn't. In any case, later on that year I called her and she met me and met my parents. My parents loved her. She loved my parents, she loved me, and a new relationship started. She took me under her wing and introduced me to people like Dave Van Ronk , Phil Ochs, Janice Ian, Eric Anderson, Carole King and she always introduced me to everyone as her son, which continued for the 45 years following that summer.

Boots Jaffee lives in the Poudre Canyon with his life partner, Mish Chris. He is a local legend, having ties to The Grateful Dead, Merle Saunders among others too numerous to list. And of course, Odetta.  Boots sits in on blues harp regularly with HPBS member band Cowboys Dead. Learn more about Boots here.

Boots Jaffee with his mom, Odetta, on the right and his Aunt Jimmi on the left.