By Don Allred
(As of 2022: Previously unreleased club and home tapes are on Bandcamp, but search on her name, with and w/o middle initial; they're not all on same label. Reissues are on YouTube Music and maybe elsewhere.)
Shuckin Sugar, seamlessly selected from two January 1963 shows at the Attic, Joe Loop’s Boulder place, plus a CORE benefit, was my gateway for Dalton’s glinting vocal precision, which can take its time, an extra split second rolling and yowling all around the release of each note (like Joplin at the beginning and end of her discography, not the loud middle)(although some of Dalton’s Green Rocky Road living room tape is like mainlining Sonny [and Lind!a] Sharrock’s Black Woman intensity-wise, so might as well be loud, but ain’t; Dalton seems never to have felt the so-far-extant musical need for that). Sometimes it’s in my system already, just pure, or distilled, which might be the better word lifestyle-wise: that thin substance some called “horn-like,” which goes with the jazzy suggestions sometimes audible in her 12-string folk-country blues: the modal connections, also the--modulation? Is she re-tuning some strings back and forth?--- the march, shuffle, pendulum going sideways in a good way, just for a little while, with voice reflecting that or vice-versa, while third husband Richard Tucker’s singing and six-string has no prob following (not here, although some of the expeditions on 1966 send for instance their former The Trio colleague Tim Hardin’s songs sideways in an alarming way, but hey those are just rehearsal tapes, nothing ventured nothing gained ).
The cadence, reinforced at times by her banjo. and always a boot beat,
:sounds and feels bold and careful at once: she knows:
“You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley all by yourself,”
just like John and Jesus did,
even “If you’re ah viper,
and she is, babes (introduces that smoke song by saying something
to the effect
that it’s a response–by other hands, a cover as always—
to “a Biblical passage about a generation of vipers”).
There’s always something straightforward and affirmative,
sometimes even hopeful, at least purposeful with no loss ov shadows:
”In The Pines” goes right over there in the scent without the usual waltz, and
“Katie Cruel” ‘s brief stark life, from pretty to shitty, has just enough room
for rich whistling. On my sub-sub-audiophile over-the-ear headphones and
YouTube Music, especially (though it worked as well first of all on Bandcamp),
this whole set works better and better, note by note, on these ancient tapes,
and is sometimes breathtaking (not a word I ever first choose to use).
Dalton’s other 2022 release, the expanded 50th Anniversary Edition of her second and last studio album, In My Own Time, was (following the duet tapes) pretty startling at first,
being served up with with a full, unmistakably early 70s
rootsy-polished Woodstock band, but except for this
kinda tiresome cover of
“When A Man Loves A Woman” and the kinda funny
(when all the guys start singing along),
ready for James Taylor “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),”
all the covers seem much closer to home, speaking to her strengths,
with Harvey Brooks’s production always in good faith.
As was his bass playing on the refined, less sympatico
Nic Venet-produced ‘69 maiden voyage It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best:
a late-night blues groove, with promising choices of material like
“Sweet Substitute, “ yet where she can sound a little too careful,
especially when her guitar and banjo are mixed way down low
—often effectively absent, no matter how loud I turn it up
—most distressingly so on “Ribbon Bow,”
another intriguing harmonic horizon line of Shucking Sugar.
Coming back to IMOT 50th after that, it’s even more of a grower,
as I get the hang of
floating momentum, as the sun changes the clouds of opener
“Something On Your Mind,” by Dino Valente
(AKA Chet Powers, who also wrote Youngbloods apotheosis “Get Together”
before settling in as tiresome, nasal, magic microphone headvoice of
Quicksilver Messenger Service, then checking out early:
what the hell with guys like this?)
Richard Manuel’s “In A Station” gets maybe a bit
overemphatic instrumentally, but most of these tracks
build in a satisfying way, sometimes with just a few notes
coming in from the margins, commenting, suggesting.
Dalton, always appealing, gets overtly seductive,
or at least inviting, on Tate’s “Take Me,”
because sometimes you gotta spell it out, while remaining mobile
enough (more flotation, in case the response isn’t satisfactory)
Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream” is as robust and slightly blurryphotorealist as dreams can be: a view from a slow merry-go-round,
centered by Brooks’ oompah bass, leaning out from associations
with Miles Davis’s “All Blues,” and here comes
Bll Keith’s steel guitar again, defining the edge of motion,
a good place to step.
The band occasionally disappears, except this “Katie Cruel”
leaves off the whistling for Bobby Notkoff’s daring, never oversold fiddle
(which is also on Michelle’s 60s L.A. psych-folk-pop nocturne Saturn Rings,, produced by Curt Boettcher) and the Steve Weber-arranged “Same Old Man”
withstands a droning swarm of un auto-taggable triumph
(perhaps Robert Fritz’s clarinet, if it’s bass
and he knows Tuvan throat-singing??)
“One Night of Love” gets Brooks’ bass loping toward
“Can’t Turn You Loose” (not officially covered, but close enough)
Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For the Country?”
is the hazy, observant closer, antipodal to “Something on Your Mind.”
Three alt-takes are all keepers:
“Something…” gets a more lively-from-the-start combo performance,
maybe considered a little too folk-rock for hipper 1972,
but certainly not for 2022; this “In My Own Dream” mainly differs in being
a minute longer, which is fine by me) ditto six live ventures of Dalton and band
into Bremen and a Montreux festival, with studio atmospherics intact enough and nimble: it’s a balancing act, really out there for her,
far from the Attic and her Boulder living room.
If only she could have kept going a little longer,
as the singer-songwriter thing found its niche on little labels, beyond
trend-hungry majors, then maybe…
But her stubbornness, her wariness, her night vision too,
seem to have included some fear, some blinks, some blanks: for one thing,
she refused to sing her own words, though the musical settings
provided by Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Julia Holter(!)
and a variety of other singer-composers on Remembering Mountains always sound plausibly Daltonesque,
Her words were ready to go, to be perhaps matched to adapted traditional tunes
a la Dylan and others, but—maybe she just couldn’t face
the tough aesthetic choices that wait for any writer, the ones that can
wake somebody up at 4:00 AM or lunch:
“My God why did or didn’t I do THAT?”
Here several people who knew her have their say, sometimes disagreeing:
a suitable “oral history, sort of,” cogently spliced by Johnny West:
https://johnnywestmusic.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/karen-dalton-an-oral-history-sort-of/
*This follow-up adds that Dalton did write out chords
for the words that Sharon Van Etten sings on Remembering Mountains:
https://johnnywestmusic.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/now-your-time-is-your-own/
PS: "If You're A Viper" is the moonlit stoner ballad-anthem
(implying rhyme with "piper," I think) from which coinage
"vaper" might well have come.
(As of 2022: Previously unreleased club and home tapes are on Bandcamp, but search on her name, with and w/o middle initial; they're not all on same label. Reissues are on YouTube Music and maybe elsewhere.)
Shuckin Sugar, seamlessly selected from two January 1963 shows at the Attic, Joe Loop’s Boulder place, plus a CORE benefit, was my gateway for Dalton’s glinting vocal precision, which can take its time, an extra split second rolling and yowling all around the release of each note (like Joplin at the beginning and end of her discography, not the loud middle)(although some of Dalton’s Green Rocky Road living room tape is like mainlining Sonny [and Lind!a] Sharrock’s Black Woman intensity-wise, so might as well be loud, but ain’t; Dalton seems never to have felt the so-far-extant musical need for that). Sometimes it’s in my system already, just pure, or distilled, which might be the better word lifestyle-wise: that thin substance some called “horn-like,” which goes with the jazzy suggestions sometimes audible in her 12-string folk-country blues: the modal connections, also the--modulation? Is she re-tuning some strings back and forth?--- the march, shuffle, pendulum going sideways in a good way, just for a little while, with voice reflecting that or vice-versa, while third husband Richard Tucker’s singing and six-string has no prob following (not here, although some of the expeditions on 1966 send for instance their former The Trio colleague Tim Hardin’s songs sideways in an alarming way, but hey those are just rehearsal tapes, nothing ventured nothing gained ).
The cadence, reinforced at times by her banjo. and always a boot beat,
:sounds and feels bold and careful at once: she knows:
“You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley all by yourself,”
just like John and Jesus did,
even “If you’re ah viper,
and she is, babes (introduces that smoke song by saying something
to the effect
that it’s a response–by other hands, a cover as always—
to “a Biblical passage about a generation of vipers”).
There’s always something straightforward and affirmative,
sometimes even hopeful, at least purposeful with no loss ov shadows:
”In The Pines” goes right over there in the scent without the usual waltz, and
“Katie Cruel” ‘s brief stark life, from pretty to shitty, has just enough room
for rich whistling. On my sub-sub-audiophile over-the-ear headphones and
YouTube Music, especially (though it worked as well first of all on Bandcamp),
this whole set works better and better, note by note, on these ancient tapes,
and is sometimes breathtaking (not a word I ever first choose to use).
Dalton’s other 2022 release, the expanded 50th Anniversary Edition of her second and last studio album, In My Own Time, was (following the duet tapes) pretty startling at first,
being served up with with a full, unmistakably early 70s
rootsy-polished Woodstock band, but except for this
kinda tiresome cover of
“When A Man Loves A Woman” and the kinda funny
(when all the guys start singing along),
ready for James Taylor “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You),”
all the covers seem much closer to home, speaking to her strengths,
with Harvey Brooks’s production always in good faith.
As was his bass playing on the refined, less sympatico
Nic Venet-produced ‘69 maiden voyage It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You The Best:
a late-night blues groove, with promising choices of material like
“Sweet Substitute, “ yet where she can sound a little too careful,
especially when her guitar and banjo are mixed way down low
—often effectively absent, no matter how loud I turn it up
—most distressingly so on “Ribbon Bow,”
another intriguing harmonic horizon line of Shucking Sugar.
Coming back to IMOT 50th after that, it’s even more of a grower,
as I get the hang of
floating momentum, as the sun changes the clouds of opener
“Something On Your Mind,” by Dino Valente
(AKA Chet Powers, who also wrote Youngbloods apotheosis “Get Together”
before settling in as tiresome, nasal, magic microphone headvoice of
Quicksilver Messenger Service, then checking out early:
what the hell with guys like this?)
Richard Manuel’s “In A Station” gets maybe a bit
overemphatic instrumentally, but most of these tracks
build in a satisfying way, sometimes with just a few notes
coming in from the margins, commenting, suggesting.
Dalton, always appealing, gets overtly seductive,
or at least inviting, on Tate’s “Take Me,”
because sometimes you gotta spell it out, while remaining mobile
enough (more flotation, in case the response isn’t satisfactory)
Paul Butterfield’s “In My Own Dream” is as robust and slightly blurryphotorealist as dreams can be: a view from a slow merry-go-round,
centered by Brooks’ oompah bass, leaning out from associations
with Miles Davis’s “All Blues,” and here comes
Bll Keith’s steel guitar again, defining the edge of motion,
a good place to step.
The band occasionally disappears, except this “Katie Cruel”
leaves off the whistling for Bobby Notkoff’s daring, never oversold fiddle
(which is also on Michelle’s 60s L.A. psych-folk-pop nocturne Saturn Rings,, produced by Curt Boettcher) and the Steve Weber-arranged “Same Old Man”
withstands a droning swarm of un auto-taggable triumph
(perhaps Robert Fritz’s clarinet, if it’s bass
and he knows Tuvan throat-singing??)
“One Night of Love” gets Brooks’ bass loping toward
“Can’t Turn You Loose” (not officially covered, but close enough)
Richard Tucker’s “Are You Leaving For the Country?”
is the hazy, observant closer, antipodal to “Something on Your Mind.”
Three alt-takes are all keepers:
“Something…” gets a more lively-from-the-start combo performance,
maybe considered a little too folk-rock for hipper 1972,
but certainly not for 2022; this “In My Own Dream” mainly differs in being
a minute longer, which is fine by me) ditto six live ventures of Dalton and band
into Bremen and a Montreux festival, with studio atmospherics intact enough and nimble: it’s a balancing act, really out there for her,
far from the Attic and her Boulder living room.
If only she could have kept going a little longer,
as the singer-songwriter thing found its niche on little labels, beyond
trend-hungry majors, then maybe…
But her stubbornness, her wariness, her night vision too,
seem to have included some fear, some blinks, some blanks: for one thing,
she refused to sing her own words, though the musical settings
provided by Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Julia Holter(!)
and a variety of other singer-composers on Remembering Mountains always sound plausibly Daltonesque,
Her words were ready to go, to be perhaps matched to adapted traditional tunes
a la Dylan and others, but—maybe she just couldn’t face
the tough aesthetic choices that wait for any writer, the ones that can
wake somebody up at 4:00 AM or lunch:
“My God why did or didn’t I do THAT?”
Here several people who knew her have their say, sometimes disagreeing:
a suitable “oral history, sort of,” cogently spliced by Johnny West:
https://johnnywestmusic.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/karen-dalton-an-oral-history-sort-of/
*This follow-up adds that Dalton did write out chords
for the words that Sharon Van Etten sings on Remembering Mountains:
https://johnnywestmusic.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/now-your-time-is-your-own/
PS: "If You're A Viper" is the moonlit stoner ballad-anthem
(implying rhyme with "piper," I think) from which coinage
"vaper" might well have come.
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