Karen Dalton: In My Own Time

Karen Dalton is sometimes described as a cult artist, and it was apparently a pretty small cult for many years, as I’m fairly familiar with pop music but as far as I can remember I had never heard her name until a couple of years ago. She was a ‘60s folksinger who issued two albums in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and then was lost to drugs and alcohol until her death in 1993. She’s become more widely known lately with people like Joanna Newsom praising her and citing her odd vocal style as an influence.

This is the second of those two albums. Judging by it, I would rank her near the top of the list of great singers with unbeautiful voices, up there with people like Dylan in his prime. She’s often compared to Billie Holiday, with good reason, but her voice is very different, sounding more a product of a rural white culture than an urban black one, and considerably rougher, sounding just a little like a crow at times. But like Holiday, she seems to consider the written melody and rhythm of the song as no more than suggestions, a rough sketch rather than a blueprint, and she somehow makes it work.

The version of the old folkie standard “Katy Cruel” on this album is astonishing, and several other tracks are equally good. But there are really only four or five songs here that I wouldn’t want to be without. Someone thought it would be a good idea for her to try soul classics like “When A Man Loves A Woman,” and although her supernaturally weird phrasing makes them interesting the tracks don’t really succeed as complete works. She’s at her best with more rural blues and country material and minimal acoustic instrumentation—banjo and fiddle, say, or just a guitar, like this (not on the album):

On the other hand, though, the first track here gives a tantalizing hint of what might have been a sort of female Astral Weeks. You can hear 30-second samples from the album at the eMusic page.