Send "Karen Dalton " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Dustedmagazine |
 Folksinger Karen Dalton was legendarily loathe to record in studios. The two albums well-intentioned producers managed to coax from her before she gave herself over full time to the addictions that ultimately killed her were the result of stressful negotiating and even trickery. 1966 is her third posthumous release by Delmore Records; like the other two it was recorded before the “proper” albums she made with Nick Venet and Harvey Brooks, and it wasn’t done in a studio. Dalton made 1966 at her mountain home in Colorado with her husband Richard Tucker, who supplies some guitar and voice on five tracks to augment her 12-string guitar, banjo and inimitable low moan. This may account for some of the ease one hears in these performances. Tucker relates in the liner notes that Dalton was never happier than when she was sitting in a rocking chair, singing and playing for visitors. One of those visitors, Tim Hardin, contributed four of the songs heard here. Like Dalton, he had left New York City with a wealth of musical learning and a monkey on his back; when he joined the couple in Colorado, he briefly found companionship, understanding, and musical accompaniment that no orchestra or session man posse ever matched. Tucker and Dalton may already have learned some of those songs from Hardin when they were all part of the Greenwich Village folk scene, but they sang those songs together during Hardin’s visit to their home, and there’s a lived-in quality to them on 1966. Hardin isn’t on this record, but the presence of his songs is one of the decisive differences between the Dalton who recorded Green Rocky Road and Cotton Eyed Joe in 1962-3 and the Dalton who made this record. Those records leaned on old folk songs and ones Dalton probably learned off the radio, but nearly half the songs on 1966 were written by her buddies Hardin and Fred Neil. The influence of her time in NYC is also evident in her guitar playing, which is more fluid and less anxious here. You can hear her becoming the performer who would make It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best, but not so fraught by the discomfort that going into a studio caused her....full text |
| Acousticmusic |
| I forget what year it was, probably around '77, but I was in the process of expanding my musical palette and ran across, buried away in a pile of ridiculously cheap vinyl at a warehouse store in West L.A., an LP by someone I'd never heard of, a woman by the name of Karen Dalton. The LP was fairly plain and titled In My Own Time, which seemed to be a play on a song I was familiar with. Flipping it over, I noted a very eclectic selection of songs but, yep, especially a cover of Butterfield's In My Own Dream from one of my favorite early bluesrock LPs. Getting home with the disc, I tossed it on the turntable and was dumbstruck to hear what seemed to be Billie Holiday covering Paul Butterfield! Moving to her rendition of How Sweet It is to be Loved by You, I was further stunned. This woman had completely turned the standard around, reshaping the pop soul hit into a honky tonked semi-jazz swing shuffle. And it's that chameleonic inner aesthetic transposition mode which distinguished the tormented chanteuse, causing Dylan, Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, and the inner circle of the folk elite of the day to laud her unique virtues. The woman, however, was a Salinger-esque figure whom the promo lit designates as "remote, mercurial". That only begins the catalogue. Karen Dalton was born Cheyenne, boasted a dark beauty, went through a rather intense set of rounds with hard drugs, drink, and men, and could not bear city life, forever escaping to woods and mountains to maintain a fragile temperament. Her wild spirit found civilization too capricious, malevolent, destructive, and cruel. Speaking of cruel, I have a penchant for damning my 'fellow' crits for their frequently extraordinarily wanting 'graces', but Ben Edmonds here pens a knowing, sympathetic, and ultimately warm essay on Dalton that begins to illuminate the tragic recluse. And speaking of recluses, listen to what she does to the traditional Cotton Eyed Joe, turning it (Nick) Drakian in a fashion never attempted, to my knowledge, before or since. This occurs more than once on the disc, as opposed to the heavily Holiday-esque Time LP. And these recordings, home taped transcriptions, are a trifle below par, but the quality of delivery lifts them up well beyond any technical concerns. The third in a series of found jewels issued by various labels, they're as important as the Steve Mann releases of recent years (here and here) (one of which boasts lost Janis Joplin work)....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Karen Dalton, a former staple of the Greenwich Village folk scene, fled to the mountains of Colorado in 1966 with her husband Richard Tucker. Their place was so remote that it lacked an actual address. The facilities were so primitive that they lacked running water. Still, Dalton had her horse to ride, a banjo to play and a voice with which to sing. And what a strange voice; critics frequently compared her vocals with jazz singer Billie Holiday. That’s only true if one thinks of the raspy Holiday singing of the fifties. Dalton has a much more brittle and aching style. Her recordings sound as if her voice is always about to break. This is certainly the case on these newly discovered recordings of Dalton in her cabin during 1966. These songs were not meant to be released. Instead, friend Carl Baron just turned on his reel to reel tape recorder while visiting. The tapes lack sonic dynamics by today’s compressed standards, but they reveal the warm intimacy of a musician just singing and playing at home with family and friends listening. But there is also a formality of presentation here. You never hear Dalton interrupted or the audience respond by clapping. She doesn’t talk between songs. These are just 14 tracks that serve as demos, as if Dalton thought perhaps of recording them in a studio at a later date. It should be noted that her husband does play guitar on one cut, Fred Neil’s “Little Bit of Rain”, and sings in the background on four other cuts. His presence does not make a significant impression. Most of the material recorded here never found their way to vinyl. One exception is the folk song “Katie Cruel”, which went on to become the tune for which Dalton was best known after recording it five years later. The maudlin lyrics concern a once popular girl who has been rejected by her friends and the townspeople for reasons unclear. Sung in the first person, the version here is more vituperative than sad, unlike the one from the ‘70s. The main character sings of herself with pride and the others with spite. Her refusal to conform is a badge of honour. Dalton’s banjo playing confirms this attitude as she hits the strings hard and plays in the melody in martial time. Dalton was friends with Tim Hardin, and three of his songs are included here. As far as I can tell, these are Dalton’s only recordings of the tunes, “Reason to Believe”, “Shiloh Town”, and “Don’t Make Promises”. Rod Stewart’s version of “Reason to Believe” recorded several years after this one, is probably the most famous. Stewart offers a bombastic and melodramatic rendition. Dalton takes the opposite approach. Her persona is self-effacing. Dalton stresses the vowel sounds in the words to express her pain “If I listen loooooong enough to yooooh”, she croons emphatically. She blames herself for putting up with an errant lover, and expresses a willingness to continue if she could only convince herself that things would change. But Dalton knows better. The other tracks are a mix of traditional tunes (“Cotton Eyed Joe”, “Green Rocky Road”, Mole in the Ground“), jazz and blues (“God Bless the Child”, “Misery Blues”), assorted tunes from the public domain (“2:19 Train”, “Hallelujah”), and another Fred Neil composition (“Other Side to This Life”). Dalton sings and plays them all with conviction, as if she is singing her life story. The fact that many of these are tragic unfortunately matches up with her fate. She struggled with drugs and alcohol and reportedly died of AIDS after a period of living homeless in the streets of New York City. That’s a different story for another time. Here is the more resilient Dalton, whose playing and singing captures hard times but who still sounds strong. This is the sound of a woman who left the contemporary world during the pop explosion of the ‘60s for a home out West. These cuts may be little more than glorified home recordings, but they are more than charming. They capture the heart and soul of a gifted talent in an unadorned frame. It is outsider art of a high order....full text |
Karen Dalton lyrics
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