In My Own Time

Karen Dalton (1938-1993) was a singer\'s singer, beloved by Bob Dylan, Peter Stampfel and Fred Neil in her Greenwich Village heyday, and more recently worshipped by the likes of Nick Cave, Jolie Holland and Devendra Banhart. Dalton only recorded two albums, was something of a recluse, and the Dylan/ Band *Basement Tapes* number \"Katie\'s Been Gone\" is rumored to be about her. So much of a cult figure aura surrounds this jazzy, Native American, Oklahoma-born singer of folk-rock that you\'ll be forgiven if you have misgivings about her work. But she *really* is that good. Just take a gander at the first few seconds of her haunting take on the traditional \"Katie Cruel.\" Her voice sounds like nothing so much as an Appalachian variant of Billie Holiday. Recorded between 1970 and \'71 in upstate New York, *In My Own Time*, her second and final album, took six months to finish (which explains the title). Older tunes are juxtaposed with contemporary songs, including what might be the finest recording of \"When a Man Loves a Woman,\" outside of the original. *Time* is a folk-rock classic that subtly and seamlessly blends jazz, country and blues elements in a hazy, dream-like way.

The late Karen Dalton has been the muse for countless folk rock geniuses, from Bob Dylan to Devendra Banhart, from Lucinda Williams to Joanna Newsom. Legendary singer Lacy J. Dalton actually adopted her hero’s surname as her own when she started her career in country music. Karen Dalton had that affect on people – her timeless, aching, blues-soaked, Native American spirit inspired both Dylan & The Band’s “Katie’s Been Gone” (on ‘The Basement Tapes’) and Nick Cave’s “When I First Came To Town” (from ’Henry’s Dream’). Recorded over a six-month period in 1970/71 at Bearsville, ‘In My Own Time’ was Dalton’s only fully planned and realized studio album. The material was carefully selected and crafted for her by producer/musician Harvey Brooks, the Renaissance man of rock-jazz who played bass on Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” and Miles’ “Bitches Brew”. It features ten songs that reflected Dalton’s incredible ability to break just about anybody’s heart – from her spectral evocation of Joe Tate’s “One Night of Love,” to the dark tragedy of the traditional “Katie Cruel.” Known as a great interpreter of choice material, Dalton could master both country and soul genres with hauntingly pining covers of George Jones’ “Take Me” and Holland-Dozier-Holland’s “How Sweet It Is.” From Lenny Kaye (The Patti Smith Group): “Karen’s mother was full Cherokee, and told her that if your vibrations were right, plants would grow into your room, as Karen had grown onto the Village folk scene. She had the Beat spirit as well, the existential angst which felt life was dark, perpetually in pain, and that was how you became your art, if you were a real artist.’ “‘Karen was tall, willowy, had straight black hair, was long-waisted and slender, what we all wanted to look like,’ Lacy J. Dalton said. And her blend of influences – the jazz of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, the immersion of Nina Simone, the Appalachian keen of Jean Ritchie, the R&B and country that had to seep in as she made her way to New York from Oklahoma – created a ‘voice for the jaded ear.’”

Karen Dalton's second and final album is a relatively slick, robust slice of blues