Karen Dalton, in her element

While her two proper solo albums are just fine, it's been the release of two compilations of live and home recordings (Green Rocky Road and Cotton Eyed Joe) in the past couple years that provide the purest document of Karen Dalton at the peak of her musical prowess. Her voice is still one of the most gorgeously unpolished expressions of weariness and mournfulness among the 60's folk/blues set; her voice's presence manages to overtake its audience in such a way that one can't help but devote all of their focus to what was laid to tape. Dalton was frustratingly under-documented, the case for so many tragically overlooked musicians over the years, and while the incredibly upsetting end to her life might cast a distinct intensity over her recorded work, it all stands on its own as some of the most vital and powerful American music of its time. These videos below (which I believe come on a DVD with the Cotton Eyed Joe set) are Dalton in her most comfortable settings, her music striped of the sometimes intrusive country-rock-flavored production that robbed her two proper studio LP's of a certain intimacy seen here.

First, Dalton performing a stunning interpretation of "It Hurts Me Too," recorded for a French documentary:

And some rare, seemingly homemade film of Dalton performing "Blues Jumped The Rabbit":

Comments

[Nackles]

fyi Academy LPs has a Karen Dalton project in the works w/ entirely previously unreleased tracks including an acetate with a heavy rock band backing her.

[clueless in MI]

i would like to add, i just came across karen and the also departed Fred Neil, doing "Just A little Bit Of Rain" on youtube. Both of these artists presented to me via WFMU over the course of some 40 yrs. Is it any wonder my dresser drawers are full of wfmu tee-shirts?