Karen Dalton

Karen J. Dalton (born Jean Karen Cariker; July 19, 1937 – March 19, 1993) was an American country blues singer, guitarist, and banjo player. She was associated with the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene, particularly with Fred Neil, the Holy Modal Rounders, and Bob Dylan. Although she did not enjoy much commercial success during her lifetime, her music has gained significant recognition since her death. Artists like Nick Cave, but was raised in Enid, Oklahoma. She also lived in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Lawrence, Kansas. With two divorces behind her at the age of 21, Dalton left Oklahoma and arrived in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 1960s. She brought her twelve string guitar, long-neck banjo, and at least one of her two children with her.

Greenwich Village scene Dalton quickly became entrenched in the Greenwich Village folk musical scene of the 1960s. She played alongside big names of the time, including Bob Dylan (who occasionally backed her on harmonica), She was among the first to sing Hardin's "Reason to Believe". She later married Tucker, with whom she sometimes played as a duo, and in a trio with Hardin.

While Dalton was a regular at famous folk venue Café Wha? and performed at benefit concerts for civil rights groups, she was a reluctant performer who refused to sing her own songs

Re-releases and tributes It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best was re-released on Koch Records in 1997, in collaboration with New York-based radio DJ and Karen Dalton fan Nicholas Hill, and with liner notes by Peter Stampfel. In 1999, the French label Megaphone music did a European re-release of the same album, which included a bonus DVD featuring rare performance footage of Dalton and a French TV feature on Karen Dalton from 1970. In My Own Time was re-released on CD and LP on November 7, 2006, by Light in the Attic Records.

Two recordings from 1962 and 1963, previously owned by Karen's friend Joe Loop who ran the little club "The Attic" in Boulder in the early 1960s, were released on Megaphone in 2007 and 2008 as live album Cotton Eyed Joe and the home-recorded album Green Rocky Road.

The compilation tribute album, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton, was released in 2015 by folk label Tompkins Square. In similar fashion to Wilco and Billy Bragg's adaptions of Woody Guthrie songs in Mermaid Avenue, the album features adaptations of Dalton's work by artists including Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams, Josephine Foster, Sharon Van Etten, and Julia Holter. The songs feature lyrics and poems Dalton wrote before her death, which were in the care of her friend, folk guitarist Peter Walker. Fred Neil once remarked, "She sure can sing the shit out of the blues." Devendra Banhart, and Joanna Newsom have all noted her as an influence. Country singer Lacy J. Dalton, who knew Dalton in Greenwich Village, adopted her surname as a tribute.

Friend Lacy J. Dalton helped send her to rehab in Texas in the early 1990s, a stay which lasted only a couple of days before she demanded to be taken back home to Woodstock. She died there in March 1993 from an AIDS-related illness, aged 55. According to her friend Peter Walker, she had been living with the disease for more than eight years.

Documentary A documentary, Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, from filmmakers Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz, made its world premiere at Doc NYC in November 2020. Sheri Linden in The Hollywood Reporter writes: "As it introduces a one-of-a-kind artist to the uninitiated and celebrates her for aficionados, above all it listens — and invites us to do the same."

Discography Studio albums It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (1969) In My Own Time (1971)

Live album Cotton Eyed Joe (2007) (recorded live in 1962)

Other releases Green Rocky Road (2008) Recorded at home circa 1962–63, released by Delmore Recording Society; contains unreleased recordings. 1966 (2012). Released by Delmore Recording Society; contains previously unreleased recordings. Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton (2015), released by Tompkins Square. Shuckin' Sugar (2022) Recorded live circa 1963, released by Delmore Recording Society; contains unreleased recordings.