Odetta Holmes, singer, songwriter, guitarist, actress, and human rights activist, passed away Tuesday, December 2, aged 77, of a heart attack.

Folk singer Odetta Holmes, often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement” due to her performance of “O Freedom” at the March on Washington in August 1963, passed away Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, manager Doug Yeager told the Associated Press.

She had been in the hospital some three weeks after she checked in for kidney failure, he added. The septuagenarian had been in a frail condition over the past several years and needed to use a wheelchair, yet accomplished some 60 concerts in the last two years, Yeager said, each lasting one hour and a half.

Odetta Holmes, born in Birmingham, Alabama, on December 31, 1930, moved with her mother to Los Angeles in 1937. She received operatic training from early adolescence and earned a music degree from Los Angeles City College. She began her musical career with musical theater and later turned to performing folk music, accompanying herself with a guitar, in coffee shops and nightclubs, first in San Francisco and then traveling across the country.

She came to prominence in the 1950s and is credited as having a great influence on such musical icons as Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Joan Baez. Bob Dylan himself declared that her first solo album, “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues,” was crucial in turning him towards folk music.

Odetta Holmes is perhaps best remembered for her part in the August 1963 march on Washington and for her continued human rights activism. The Times wrote that legendary civil rights activist Rosa Parks was once asked what music she appreciated most, to which she answered, “All the songs Odetta sings.”

Odetta Holmes also ventured into acting, her most notable films being “Cinerama Holidays,” in 1955, 1961’s “Sanctuary,” after the William Faulkner novel of the same name, and 1974’s “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” about an African American woman who joined the civil rights movement in 1962 at the venerable age of 110.

Odetta remained active throughout her lifetime. In 1998 she released an album titled “To Ella,” a tribute to the late singer Ella Fitzgerald, whom she had been friends with. Her 2002 album “Blues Everywhere I Go,” which paid tribute to female blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, received a Grammy Award nomination.

Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary on Bob Dylan, “No Direction Home,” featured a generous portion of Odetta’s music. In 2006, she toured with jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux, for whom she opened concerts, and continued to tour solo as well.

Another album she released in 2007, “Gonna Let It Shine,” earned her another Grammy nomination, and she toured across North America in support of this album.

In January of this year, she was keynote speaker at San Diego’s Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration. She also continued to tour, despite being confined to a wheelchair, and with no effects on her deep voice. She had been scheduled to perform at Barack Obama’s inauguration in January, 2009.