Odetta, the folk singer and civil rights campaigner, has passed away before she could sing at Barack Obama's inauguration as president. She was 77. She was hospitalized due to kidney failure four weeks ago, four days after Mr Obama's election victory.

A tireless campaigner for liberal causes, she was at the side of Martin Luther King in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial where she sang I'm on My Way before King made his famous "I have a dream" speech. Mr Obama had asked her to sing the song at his inauguration 46 years later.

Bob Dylan once said that the first thing that turned him on to folk singing was Odetta.