Henry Oden
American musician
Henry Oden (born February 8, 1947) is an American blues musician from California.
Biography
Born in Oakland, Oden grew up in Richmond. His parents had migrated from the south to work in the shipyards, and Oden's father bought him a guitar from a Montgomery Ward catalogue when he was 15 years old. He was taught to play by Robert Kelton, a guitarist for Jimmy McCracklin, and within a year he was sitting in on jam sessions around the local area; he would also play and sing in local churches. In the 1960s he was the bass player with Freddy & The Stone Souls, working with Freddie Stone Stewart, brother of Sly Stone, and backing many local acts such as Rodger Collins and Fillmore Slim. He was also a member of Loading Zone, and recorded behind the group's vocalist Linda Tillery when the group split up.
In the 1970s, Oden toured for a short while with Freddie King, and helped to develop the career of Lady Bianca. He returned to music in his own right in the early 1980s, working with Mark Naftalin's Blue Monday band, recording with Clifton Chenier, and touring internationally and recording with the San Francisco Blues Festival package. In the middle of the decade he teamed up with Joe Louis Walker, providing Walker with "Shade Tree Mechanic" (among other songs throughout the years). This relationship was spasmodic, and for a while Oden based himself in Canada, taking a degree in humanities.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Henry Oden” as american musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16116243. VIAF identifies the subject as 304273895. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Oden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.