Karen J. Dalton (born Jean Karen Cariker; July 19, 1937 – March 19, 1993) was an American
country blues
Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in t ...
singer
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
, guitarist, and
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
player. She was associated with the early 1960s
Greenwich Village folk music scene, particularly with
Fred Neil
Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001) was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He did not achieve commercial success as a performer and is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material&n ...
, the
Holy Modal Rounders
The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music group, originally the duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who began performing together on the Lower East Side of New York City in the early 1960s. Their unique blend of folk music revival ...
, and
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
. Although she did not enjoy much commercial success during her lifetime, her music has gained significant recognition since her death. Artists like
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...
,
Devendra Banhart,
and
Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisc ...
have noted her as an influence.
Life and career
Dalton was born Jean Karen Cariker in
Bonham, Texas
Bonham is a city and the county seat of Fannin County, Texas. The population was 10,408 at the 2020 census. James Bonham (the city's namesake) sought the aid of James Fannin (the county's namesake) at the Battle of the Alamo. Bonham is part of the ...
,
but was raised in
Enid, Oklahoma
Enid ( ) is the ninth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the county seat of Garfield County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 51,308. Enid was founded during the opening of the Cherokee Outlet in the Land Run of 1893, a ...
. She also lived in
Stillwater, Oklahoma
Stillwater ( iow, Ñápinⁿje, ''meaning: "Water quiet"'') is a city in, and the county seat of, Payne County, Oklahoma, United States. It is located in north-central Oklahoma at the intersection of U.S. Route 177 and State Highway 51. As of th ...
, and
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County, Kansas, Douglas County, Kansas, United States, and the sixth-largest city in the state. It is in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas River, Kansas and Waka ...
. With two divorces behind her at the age of 21, Dalton left Oklahoma and arrived in
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...
, New York City in the early 1960s.
She brought her
twelve string guitar
A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...
, long-neck
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
, and at least one of her two children with her.
According to her daughter Abralyn Baird, at that point Dalton had lost two of her bottom teeth breaking up a fight between two of her boyfriends.
Greenwich Village scene
Dalton quickly became entrenched in the Greenwich Village folk musical scene of the 1960s. She played alongside big names of the time, including
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
(who occasionally backed her up on harmonica),
Fred Neil
Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001) was an American folk singer-songwriter active in the 1960s and early 1970s. He did not achieve commercial success as a performer and is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material&n ...
, Richard Tucker, and
Tim Hardin
James Timothy Hardin (December 23, 1941 – December 29, 1980) was an American folk and blues musician and composer. As well as releasing his own material, several of his songs, including " If I Were a Carpenter" and "Reason to Believe", becam ...
.
She covered many of their songs in her own performances. Dylan later wrote that "Karen had a voice like
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...
and played guitar like
Jimmy Reed
Mathis James Reed (September 6, 1925 – August 29, 1976) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His particular style of electric blues was popular with blues as well as non-blues audiences. Reed's songs such as "Honest I Do" (1957), " ...
.” She was among the first to sing Hardin's "
Reason to Believe
"Reason to Believe" is a song written, composed, and first recorded by American folk singer Tim Hardin in 1965. It has since been recorded by artists including Bobby Darin in 1966, Karen Dalton also in 1966, Glen Campbell in 1968, the Nitty Gritty ...
". She later married Tucker, with whom she sometimes played as a duo, and in a trio with Hardin.
While Dalton was a regular at famous folk venue
Café Wha? and performed at benefit concerts for civil rights groups, she was a reluctant performer and refused to perform her own songs.
Combined with her use of alcohol and heroin, recording her music and touring was particularly hard.
Dalton moved to Colorado with husband Richard Tucker and daughter Abralyn (Abbe) and lived there for a while in the 1960s, in a small mining cabin in Summerville. Eventually she moved back to New York via Los Angeles, and then to Woodstock, New York.
''It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best'' (album)
Dalton was "not interested in playing the music industry's games in an era when musicians had little other choice," as bass player and producer
Harvey Brooks noted.
She often responded in anger when producers attempted to change her music while recording.
At first, producer
Nick Venet
Nick Venet (born Nikolas Kostantinos Venetoulis, 3 December 1936 – 2 January 1998) was an American record producer, who began his career at age 19 with World Pacific Jazz. He is best known for signing The Beach Boys to Capitol Records and p ...
was unsuccessful in recording her first album, ''
It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best
''It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best'' is the debut album by American folk blues musician Karen Dalton, originally released in 1969 by Capitol Records (see 1969 in music).
The album was subsequently reissued on CD by the K ...
'' (
Capitol
A capitol, named after the Capitoline Hill in Rome, is usually a legislative building where a legislature meets and makes laws for its respective political entity.
Specific capitols include:
* United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.
* Numerous ...
, 1969). It wasn't until he invited Fred Neil to a session that they were able to come away with recordings. Even then, Venet and Neil were only successful by tricking Dalton into thinking the tape wasn't rolling.
Dalton cut most of the tracks with one take, and all in one night.
The record features songs from Neil, Hardin,
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a gen ...
, and
Eddie Floyd
Edward Lee Floyd (born June 25, 1937) is an American R&B and soul singer and songwriter, best known for his work on the Stax record label in the 1960s and 1970s, including the No. 1 R&B hit song " Knock on Wood".
Biography
Floyd was born in ...
&
Booker T. Jones
Booker Taliaferro Jones Jr. (born November 12, 1944) is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known art ...
.
It was re-released by
Koch Records
MNRK Music Group (pronounced "monarch", formerly known as Koch Records and eOne Music) is a New York City-based independent record label and music management company. It was formed in 2009 from the music assets of Koch Entertainment, which had b ...
on CD in 1996.
''In My Own Time'' (album)
Dalton's second album, ''
In My Own Time'' (1971), was recorded at
Bearsville Studios
Bearsville Sound Studio was a recording studio founded by Albert Grossman in Bearsville, New York,
west of Woodstock in 1969.
History
Albert Grossman, who was the manager of Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, first arrived in Bearsville in 1 ...
(which was set up by Bob Dylan's manager,
Albert Grossman
Albert Bernard Grossman (May 21, 1926 – January 25, 1986) was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music and rock and roll scene. He was famous as the manager of many of the most popular and successful performers of folk and ...
)
and originally released by
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. ...
promoter
Michael Lang's label,
Just Sunshine Records.
The album was produced and arranged by
Harvey Brooks, who played bass on it. Piano player
Richard Bell guested on the album. Its liner notes were written by Fred Neil and its cover photos were taken by
Elliott Landy
Elliott Landy (born 1942) is an American photographer and writer. Best known for his iconic photographs from the Sixties Classic Rock period, Elliott Landy was one of the first "music photographers" to be recognized as an "artist.”
Biography
...
. Dalton brought her two teenage children, her dog, and her horse from Oklahoma to feel more at ease with recording.
Re-releases and tributes
''It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best'' was re-released on Koch Records in 1997, in collaboration with New York-based radio DJ and Karen Dalton fan Nicholas Hill, and with liner notes by
Peter Stampfel
Peter Stampfel (born October 29, 1938, in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin) is an American fiddle player, old-time musician, and singer-songwriter.
Stampfel is best known as a member of the Holy Modal Rounders, a psychedelic folk band that he founded with ...
. In 1999 the French label Megaphone music did a European re-release of the same album, which included a bonus DVD featuring rare performance footage of Dalton and a French TV feature on Karen Dalton from 1970. ''In My Own Time'' was re-released on CD and LP on November 7, 2006 by
Light in the Attic Records
Light in the Attic Records is an independent record label that was established in 2002 in Seattle, Washington by Matt Sullivan. The label is known for its roster of reissue projects and for its distribution catalog. Light in the Attic has re-rel ...
.
Two recordings from 1962 and 1963, previously owned by Karen's friend Joe Loop who ran the little club "The Attic" in Boulder in the early 60's, were released on Megaphone in 2007 and 2008 as live album
''Cotton Eyed Joe'' and the home-recorded album ''Green Rocky Road.''
The compilation tribute album, ''Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton'', was released in 2015 by folk label Tompkins Square.
In similar fashion to Wilco and Billy Bragg’s adaptions of Woody Guthrie songs in ''
Mermaid Avenue
''Mermaid Avenue'' is a 1998 album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, put to music written and performed by British singer Billy Bragg and the American band Wilco. The project was the first of several ...
'', the album features adaptations of Dalton's work by artists including
Patty Griffin
Patricia Jean Griffin (born March 16, 1964) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician.Griffin, Patrici She is a vocalist and plays guitar and piano. She is known for her stripped-down songwriting style in the folk music genre. Her songs ha ...
,
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Gayle Williams (born January 26, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums: '' Ramblin' on My Mind'' (1979) and '' Happy Woman Blues'' (1980), in a traditional country and blues style ...
,
Josephine Foster
Josephine Foster is an American singer, songwriter, and musician from Colorado. She is known for her anachronistic voice and work that weaves older styles with the modern, escaping simple classification.
As a teenager Foster worked as a churc ...
,
Sharon Van Etten
Sharon Katharine Van Etten (born February 26, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter. She has released six studio albums, the latest of which is '' We've Been Going About This All Wrong'' (2022).
Early life
Van Etten was born in Belleville, N ...
, and
Julia Holter
Julia Shammas Holter (born December 18, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, composer, artist and academic, based in Los Angeles. Following three independent album productions, Holter released ''Tragedy'' as her first official ...
. The songs feature lyrics and poems Dalton wrote before her death, which were in the care of her friend, folk guitarist
Peter Walker.
Style
Dalton's bluesy, world-weary voice is often compared to
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
singer
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop si ...
, though Dalton loathed the comparison
and said
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and ...
was a greater influence. Dalton sang blues, folk, country, pop,
Motown
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''moto ...
—making over each song in her own style. She played the
twelve string guitar
A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...
and a long-neck
banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...
.
Known as "the folk singer's answer to Billie Holiday" and "Sweet Mother K.D.", Dalton is said to be the subject of the song "Katie's Been Gone" (composed by
Richard Manuel
Richard George Manuel (April 3, 1943 – March 4, 1986) was a Canadian singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, best known as a pianist and one of three lead singers in The Band, for which he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and ...
and
Robbie Robertson
Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson, OC (born July 5, 1943), is a Canadian musician. He is best known for his work as lead guitarist and songwriter for the Band, and for his career as a solo recording artist. With the deaths of Richard Manuel in ...
) on the album ''
The Basement Tapes
''The Basement Tapes'' is the sixteenth album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and his second with the Band. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records. Two-thirds of the album's 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed b ...
'' by
The Band and
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
, who wrote of Dalton that "My favorite singer...was Karen Dalton. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played guitar like
Jimmy Reed
Mathis James Reed (September 6, 1925 – August 29, 1976) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His particular style of electric blues was popular with blues as well as non-blues audiences. Reed's songs such as "Honest I Do" (1957), " ...
... I sang with her a couple of times." Fred Neil once remarked, "She sure can sing the shit out of the blues."
Modern artists
Adele
Adele Laurie Blue Adkins (, ; born 5 May 1988), professionally known by the mononym Adele, is an English singer and songwriter. After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a reco ...
,
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Ca ...
,
Devendra Banhart,
and
Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisc ...
have all noted her as an influence. So does country singer
Lacy J. Dalton
Lacy J. Dalton (born Jill Lynne Byrem; October 13, 1946) is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is known for her gritty, powerful vocals, which ''People Magazine'' likened to a country equivalent of Bonnie Raitt.
Dalton had a ...
, who knew Dalton in Greenwich Village and adopted her surname as a tribute.
Later life and death
Commercial failure of her album ''In My Own Time'' and her estrangement from her children contributed to further substance abuse later in Dalton's life.
In later years, Dalton lived in a mobile home located in a clearing off Eagle's Nest Road, outside the town of
Hurley, near Woodstock.
Friend
Lacy J. Dalton
Lacy J. Dalton (born Jill Lynne Byrem; October 13, 1946) is an American country music singer and songwriter. She is known for her gritty, powerful vocals, which ''People Magazine'' likened to a country equivalent of Bonnie Raitt.
Dalton had a ...
helped send her to rehab in Texas in the early 1990s; a stay which lasted only a couple of days before she demanded to be taken back home to Woodstock again. She died there in March 1993 from an
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
-related illness, aged 55. According to her friend
Peter Walker, she had been living with the disease for more than eight years.
Documentary
A documentary, ''Karen Dalton: In My Own Time'', from filmmakers Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz, made its world premiere at
Doc NYC in November 2020. Sheri Linden in
The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
writes, "As it introduces a one-of-a-kind artist to the uninitiated and celebrates her for aficionados, above all it listens — and invites us to do the same."
Discography
Studio albums
* ''
It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best
''It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best'' is the debut album by American folk blues musician Karen Dalton, originally released in 1969 by Capitol Records (see 1969 in music).
The album was subsequently reissued on CD by the K ...
'' (1969)
* ''
In My Own Time'' (1971)
Live album
* ''
Cotton Eyed Joe
"Cotton-Eyed Joe" (also known as "Cotton-Eye Joe") is a traditional American country folk song popular at various times throughout the United States and Canada, although today it is most commonly associated with the American South. The song is ...
'' (2007) (recorded live in 1962)
Other releases
* ''Green Rocky Road'' (2008) Recorded at home circa 1962-63, released by Delmore Recording Society; contains unreleased recordings.
* ''1966'' (2012). Released by Delmore Recording Society; contains previously unreleased recordings.
* ''Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton'' (2015), released by Tompkins Square.
References
External links
Allmusic entryLight In The Attic Records "In My Own Time" CDDelmore Recordings "Cotton Eyed Joe: The Loop Tapes/Live In Boulder 1962" CD & DVD and "Green Rocky Road" CD""Sweet Mother KD," 2016 BBC ''Seriously...'' documentary about DaltonKaren Dalton : Jeunesse d'une femme libre, de Greenwich Village à WoodstockA comic book about the youth of Karen Dalton written by journalist Cédric Rassat and Ana Rousse (Ed. Sarbacane, 2017, 150 pages)
A Bright Light : Karen and the process a documentary by Emmanuelle Antille (Production Intermezzo Films, 2018)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dalton, Karen
1937 births
1993 deaths
American banjoists
American blues singers
American folk singers
Singer-songwriters from Oklahoma
American women country singers
American country singer-songwriters
American women singer-songwriters
20th-century American singers
Deaths from throat cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Oklahoma
20th-century American women singers
Musicians from Enid, Oklahoma
20th-century American women guitarists