MOG

Time to put your quiet hats on, Moggers. I ran across this track on Jesse Jarnow's blog the other day and I gotta say that I CANNOT get enough of this song. There's something so sad and so sublime in her singing and phrasing....

from allmusic: A cult singer, 12-string guitarist, and banjo player of the New York 1960s folk revival, Karen Dalton still remains known to very few, despite counting the likes of Bob Dylan and Fred Neil among her acquaintances. This was partly because she seldom recorded, only making one album in the 1960s -- and that didn't come out until 1969, although she had been known on the Greenwich Village circuit since the beginning of the decade. It was also partly because, unlike other folksingers of the era, she was an interpreter who did not record original material. And it was also because her voice -- often compared to Billie Holiday, but with a rural twang -- was too strange and inaccessible to pop audiences. Nik Venet, producer of her debut album, went as far as to remark in Goldmine, "She was very much like Billie Holiday. Let me say this, she wasn't Billie Holiday but she had that phrasing Holiday had and she was a remarkable one-of-a-kind type of thing.... Unfortunately, it's an acquired taste, you really have to look for the music."

Karen Dalton "Take Me" (from In My Own Time, 1971)

Take me in your darkest room Close every window and bolt every door The very first moment I heard your voice I'd be in darkness no more

Take me to the most barren desert A thousand miles from the nearest sea The very moment I saw your smile It would be like heaven to me

There's not any mountain too rugged to climb No desert too barren to cross Darlin' if you would just show a sign of love, I could bear with all loss

Take me to Siberia And the coldest weather of the winter time, And it would be just like spring in California As long as I knew you were mine