Friday Playlist: Karen Dalton
An austere, highly concentrated form of magic.
We’re having another Karen Dalton moment.
This one is largely the result of an exhaustively researched documentary about the gifted, still underknown singer, guitarist and long-neck banjo master who was part of the Greenwich Village folk world in the early ‘60s. Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, which took filmmakers Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz seven years to complete, is currently in theaters and will become available on streaming platforms starting November 16.
Interest in the Oklahoma-born Dalton, who struggled against the commercial mindset of the music business as well as with addiction (she died of complications from AIDS in 1993), seems to crest every few years. The last spike was in 2015, when Sharon Van Etten, Lucinda Williams, Julia Holter and others took part in Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton, a project that set some of Dalton’s poetry to music.
What’s key about that set: It’s the first sustained look at Dalton’s original work. On the two albums released in her lifetime and several posthumous discoveries and live sets, Dalton concentrated on familiar folk songs and blues laments. These she sang with grace and fury and a steely sense of resolve — qualities that set her apart from just about everyone else traveling the folk-blues axis. Hearing contemporary singers like Van Etten and Patty Griffin set Dalton’s poetry to music, you can’t help but wonder what Dalton’s versions would have sounded like.
Since Dalton’s death, several worth-hearing rarities have surfaced. The live Cotton-Eyed Joe is sourced from a 1962 performance; Green Rocky Road gathers recordings made in 1963 at Dalton’s home in Colorado. Joe Loop, owner of the folk-presenting Boulder coffeehouse called The Attic, handled the reel-to-reel machine as Dalton played banjo and guitar (including some 12-string). The music is simple and earnest and austere, a highly concentrated form of magic.
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