Odetta with its "Living Legend Award". In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the "Late Show with David Letterman," appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11; they performed "This Little Light of Mine". The 2005 documentary film "No Direction Home", directed by Martin Scorsese, highlights her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary. The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, as well as her "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No More
Bob Dylan complex composition "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall", alongside several other enduring songs of the era. For many of these songs he adapted the tunes and sometimes phraseology of older folk songs. Dylan went on to release the politically charged "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and the more lyrically abstract and introspective "Another Side of Bob Dylan" in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan encountered controversy when he adopted the use of electrically amplified rock instrumentation and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s, "Bringing It All Back Home",