This Sunday we are listening to ‘In My Own Time’, Karen Dalton’s second, final and beautifully beguiling album. A Sunday classic if ever there was one.
Oklahoma-bred, New York City-based folk and blues singer Karen Dalton was an extraordinary artist. With a world-weary voice - arguably one of the most unmistakable and distinctive ever recorded - she was an amazing song interpreter, conveying remarkable new heartache and depth in other peoples songs. A contemporary in the Greenwich Village folk musical scene of Bob Dylan (who occasionally backed her on harmonica), Fred Neil and Tim Hardin, her renderings of both traditional and contemporary material was transportive and always a bewitching experience.
Recorded and released in 1971, it remained largely out of print until reissue specialists Light In The Attic reissued it in 2006, with an expanded and remastered pressing in 2021 to mark the album's 50th anniversary. The contributing quotes as part of that edition testify to Dalton’s enduring charms.
"My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed." - Bob Dylan
"No one else has a voice like her." - Courtney Barnett
"['Something On Your Mind'] really stayed with me and I must have played it a million times. It's just the most extraordinary vocal I've ever heard." - Nick Cave
As the esteemed Lenny Kaye observes in his excellent liner notes, you can hear “the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, [and] the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York." Any moment on this astonishing record is just near impossible to place, an oddly timeless quality with even Elliott Landy’s striking portraits giving little away.
But alongside her extraordinary and hard-lived voice, Dalton was a tragic victim of equally hard times and addiction. She moved around compulsively, drank and took drugs heavily and only recorded on a couple of occasions. She had become reluctant to appear in public, preferring the company of only close friends. But, she was finally convinced to record In My Own Time at Woodstock’s Bearsville Studios, with the album released soon after by Woodstock Festival promoter Michael Lang's label, Just Sunshine Records. The album is a varied collection, including traditionals like “Katie Cruel” and “Same Old Man”, The Band’s “In a Station” with swirling organs, a grooving take on Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream”, R&B hits “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “How Sweet It Is” and perhaps most spectacularly Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For The Country.” Poignantly, that would be her final take; the album closes and she fades into the hiss of the speakers forever.
From the minimal accompaniments to the warmer and fuller band oriented numbers, Karen Dalton’s voice is just so incredibly enthralling. But, this is far from easy going and she can bring a sense of gut wrenching disquietude to even the sunniest number.
They weren’t her words, but she meant them more than anyone else.
‘She went her own way’: the tragic and unusual life of folk singer Karen Dalton
The Guardian | Read More
