Karen Dalton - 'In My Own Time' (50th Anniversary Edition)

Bob Dylan said of Karen Dalton:

"My favorite singer…was Karen Dalton. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed…I sang with her a couple of times."

Karen Dalton emerged from the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, a contemporary of the Holy Modal Rounders, Peter Walker, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and most famously Bob Dylan, whose enthusiastic recollection of performing with Dalton, and specifically the beauty of her singing, has helped to solidify her posthumous legacy.

Left to right: Karen Dalton, Suze Rotolo, Teri Thal, Bob Dylan & Dave Van Ronk in Greenwich Village, circa 1960/61.

Compared by Bob Dylan to Billie Holiday, Karen preferred to cite Bessie Smith as a more formative influence. In truth, the two observations are complementary. To elaborate, Fred Neil is reported to have said of Dalton: "She sure can sing the shit out of the blues."  While there’s a similarity in sound between Billie and Karen, you'd ever mistake one for the other.  To my ears, Karen hits the Bessie side of the pairing smack-dab in the bullseye, but Karen also possesses a level of sophistication in her delivery that is in the tradition of Billie.  That said, 'In My Own Time' is neither a blues nor jazz record.



Karen was effectively shunned by the folk music establishment in the 1960s.  Stories vary as to why, but the main thread seems to go something like this: she was a wild-child in an industry that, particularly before Dylan, was looking for straight, tidy Ozzie and Harriet types like Joan Baez or the Weavers. 


Karen was uncomfortable and notoriously stormy and controlling in the studio.  She wanted things her way, and seemingly, all suggestions of compromise or collaboration were tossed out as a result.  Subsequently, Karen herself was labeled "difficult to work with" and pretty much booted out by the industry.

Bob Dylan, Dalton, and Fred Neil at the "Cafe Wha?" in 1961

'In My Own Time', is as a true masterpiece by one of music's most mysterious, enigmatic, and enduringly influential artists.  Karen’s above-mentioned discomfort with the studio process isn’t a bit perceptible.

There’s a broad range of material throughout the record, including transformative dives into the soul music with takes of Percy Sledge’s "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Marvin Gaye’s "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You), which wipes the floor with James Taylor’s version, plus a swing to the C&W side of the street in a centerpiece reading of “Take Me,” by George Jones and Tammy Wynette.  There are also three stellar cuts that reinforce Dalton’s aptitude in fronting a full band of studio aces as they flourish in a blues and C&W-tinged rock mode: Paul Butterfield’s "In My Own Dream", Richard Manuel’s "In a Station," and Joe Tate’s "One Night of Love", which is my favorite track, that thrives on the subtle idiosyncrasies that might have once hindered Dalton’s commercial possibilities, but today lends her work an enduring freshness.  For the 50th Anniversary Edition release, the bonus material is either different takes or live versions of tracks from the album.

This is an absolute gem of an album.



Karen shed her mortal coil in 1993.  Given her musical anonymity, it's not surprising that a haze surrounds Dalton’s death.  The story was often that she died homeless on the streets of New York in a heroin and alcohol daze.  While Karen did have a penchant for opiates and alcohol, she died of HIV related illness, in Woodstock, NY, at the home of guitarist Peter Walker, where her son, Lee was taking care of her.

For the freeload, what groups or artists do you feel should have or had more popularity than they achieved?