Folk Friday

It seems that for many people, when they stumble upon an artist they really love, there is often a compulsion to keep whoever it may be just for themselves; a tiny, well-guarded and cared-for secret that must be protected from apathetic ears that wouldn't feel the infinite weight of how special and magical the music is.

I think it's safe to say that the music of Karen Dalton and her haunted, bluesy voice would slide right into this category.

Her discography is tiny - only two completed studio albums were ever recorded (1969's It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best, and In My Own Time in 1971 - although recently some additional live recordings have been released), and there really isn't a whole lot of solid, factual information known about her life. Even her death after an eight-year battle with AIDS in 1993 is shrouded by various rumours and stories.

The Austin Chronicle states, "The original bio for In My Own Time notes a passport that 'says she's from Texas,' but better sources claim Dalton was originally from Enid, Okla., her mother full-blooded Cherokee. She turned up in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, at the height of the folk revival, with her 12-string Gibson guitar, a long-neck banjo, and her otherworldly vocals. She immediately drew attention from the aforementioned folksinging milieu. Around the same time, she could also be found in Boulder.

The Holy Modal Rounders' folk subversive, Peter Stampfel, who played with Dalton, seems to capture her essence perfectly in the liners to the Koch reissue when he writes: 'She was the only folk singer I ever met with an authentic 'folk' background. She came to the folk music scene under her own steam, as opposed to being 'discovered' and introduced to it by people already involved in it.'

Today, by phone, Stampfel recalls Dalton with a resigned bluntness.

'We hung together from 1969 to the mid-Seventies, performing rarely. We'd take amphetamines and rehearse a lot. That band played maybe three gigs. She used to shoot amphetamines. Then, like a lot of people when they get older, she turned into an alcoholic.

There's a small amount of people that have the original records [who] were intensely affected by them – by her voice,' he offers. 'I think you can really feel the pain. She lived a hard musician's life. It wasn't about trendiness or stardom. It was about playing music.

She wasn't really made for her time.'"