Karen Dalton - Cotton Eyed Joe: The Loop Tapes, Live In Boulder 1962

Intimate singer gets even closer in the coffee shop

In the past year or so, Karen Dalton has emerged as one of folk’s overlooked heroes, with reissues of her two LPs being greeted as lost US classics. We said 1971’s In My Own Time was “as welcoming as a log fire in the smallest of country pubs”, and here comes a live recording from 1962, made in the smallest of coffee houses: The Attic, in Boulder, Colorado. Though Dalton’s singular voice is still forming, and her playing not quite as deft as on the LPs, she still manages to keep you in rapt silence, so intensely alluring is her voice and approach to material, whether it’s traditional, or covers of Ray Charles or Fred Neil. Unlike Joan Baez, who was blessed with a technically perfect voice and knack for interpretation, Dalton grabs Cotton Eyed Joe and Jelly Roll Morton’s Pallett On Your Floor, giving them complete makeovers to sound unlike much else coming from early 60s “folkies”. At times she overstretches herself, but that’s the beauty of a truly unique singer finding their voice and discovering their limitations. Plus, it’s not often an artist of such limited known output from Dalton’s time has been so well archived, which is reason enough to rejoice.

Megaphone | CDMEGA 15

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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