Karen Dalton - Green Rocky Road (1963)
These are never released 1963 home recordings.
Green Rocky Road is as close as we'll ever get to hearing the record Karen Dalton would have made in 1963. Discovered on the same reel-to-reel tapes were nine home recordings of Dalton left alone, with no one watching, no audience to please.
Accompanied solely by her own sturdy banjo picking and 12 string strumming, her deep blue, smoky-throated singing evokes the voices and faces of past lives lived - the broken-backed pioneer, the coalminer black with shadow, the stained fingers of the slave, the prostitute...the dead and forgotten.
Karen was perhaps the last true folk singer and that's the bases of the potent appeal of her enigmatic art and of her commercial failure during her too-brief lifetime. Karen took the opportunity to play music just as she pleased, very much part of the authentic "folk" process of transmission and translation that had operated in this country for centuries. Like her predecessors in this tradition she drew on whatever material caught her fancy whether it was a farm labourer’s song she'd learned as a child or a Ray Charles' tune she'd heard on the radio the day before and every style.
The synthesis she produced was perplexing, mysterious and excitingly innovative to the folks involved in New York's revivalist scene who were primarily playing traditional songs as faithful to the version they'd first heard on Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music collection or in some hushed coffee house as possible. Or were just in the early stages of recasting some of the lyrics to those sorts of songs.
Green Rocky Road is as close as we'll ever get to hearing the record Karen Dalton would have made in 1963. Discovered on the same reel-to-reel tapes were nine home recordings of Dalton left alone, with no one watching, no audience to please.
Accompanied solely by her own sturdy banjo picking and 12 string strumming, her deep blue, smoky-throated singing evokes the voices and faces of past lives lived - the broken-backed pioneer, the coalminer black with shadow, the stained fingers of the slave, the prostitute...the dead and forgotten.
Karen was perhaps the last true folk singer and that's the bases of the potent appeal of her enigmatic art and of her commercial failure during her too-brief lifetime. Karen took the opportunity to play music just as she pleased, very much part of the authentic "folk" process of transmission and translation that had operated in this country for centuries. Like her predecessors in this tradition she drew on whatever material caught her fancy whether it was a farm labourer’s song she'd learned as a child or a Ray Charles' tune she'd heard on the radio the day before and every style.
The synthesis she produced was perplexing, mysterious and excitingly innovative to the folks involved in New York's revivalist scene who were primarily playing traditional songs as faithful to the version they'd first heard on Harry Smith's Anthology Of American Folk Music collection or in some hushed coffee house as possible. Or were just in the early stages of recasting some of the lyrics to those sorts of songs.
Within a few years the likes of Tim Hardin, Fred Neil and Bob Dylan would have evolved radically new styles starting from the folk base and gone on to varying degrees of fortune and fame.
By the time Karen recorded her first two studio albums in the late 60's and early 70's the musical world had changed radically and her own oeuvre was an anomalous anachronism. She and her more successful friends in the music business made valiant attempts to build bridges to the new rock audience that'd arisen trying to put her amazing voice and playing in a contemporary context on It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best and In My Own Time. Both records are entirely enchanting and dazzlingly original. But they couldn't present Karen on her own terms like Green Rocky Road does.
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Il y a un ange gardien pour les amoureux de la musique. J'étais en train d'écouter In My Own Time et j'ai alors pensé qu'il était dommage que Karen Dalton n'ait pas enregistré lors de sa période folk et banjo. Retournant sur ton site pour écrire un commentaire, je tombe là-dessus ! Sans blague ! Alors, j'ai téléchargé et écouté tout de suite. C'est un peu répétitif, mais individuellement, les chansons tiennent bien la route. J'adore la pochette. Cette femme-là était profondément différente. Come to my places, sometimes !
Mario B said...
March 21, 2009 7:26 AM
Eh ben c'est tout simplement génial !!! J'étais loin de penser que K Dalton avait enregistré d'autres albums que les 2 seuls merveilleux précédents. On a envie de l'aimer cette femme...un peu comme Billie Holiday...Merci...merci...merci...
obladioblada said...
March 26, 2009 7:44 PM
Eh ben c'est tout simplement génial !!! J'étais loin de penser que K Dalton avait enregistré d'autres albums que les 2 seuls merveilleux précédents. On a envie de l'aimer cette femme...un peu comme Billie Holiday...
obladioblada said...
March 26, 2009 7:44 PM
J'étais loin de penser qu'il existait d'autres enregistrements de Karen Dalton...merci...merci...merci...on a envie de l'aimer cette femme...
obladioblada said...
March 26, 2009 7:46 PM