One Karen We Can Endorse

It's cult singer Dalton, of course, in a new film doc. Plus: three songs from Bob Dylan, and a few new cartoons.

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Film

Finally caught up to the new doc on ‘60s-’70s folk/cult singer Karen Dalton, In My Own Time, streaming this week, and you might consider it yourself. Coming out of Oklahoma, poor and part-Cherokee, to the NYC folk scene of the early 1960s she quickly became (allegedly) Bob Dylan’s favorite singer. Fatally, she did not write her own songs but was an amazing interpreter, kind of the Billie Holiday of folk. Never comfortable in any scene, she did not break through, then recorded two albums, including one, based in Woodstock, in 1971 that we hailed at Crawdaddy but also did not catch fire. Then she spiralled into drugs, which surprised no one, finally passing away at an early age from AIDs.

Somehow, one of her songs (see below), has generated zillions of Spotify plays, so I guess she has been “discovered.”

Rare clip of her live in fantastic version of bluesy standard. Yes, she had a tooth knocked out in a fight with a boyfriend and never got it fixed—not a priority for her.

Here is the film trailer

Nick Cave in the film pays tribute:

And “A Little Bit of Rain.”

This, rightly, is her Spotify “bestseller” (written by Dino Valenti), below….

She was close to another tragic troubled soul, Tim Hardin, and covered several of his songs. He may have also helped her on the path to hard drugs.

Songs of the Day

If you missed that terrific black and white Bob Dylan online “roadhouse” special a few months ago, here are three highlights (“Baby Blue,” “Tom Thumb,” “What Was it You Wanted”).