I don't know much about Karen Dalton, but the release of her album Green Rocky Road sounds pretty epic. Not to mention that both Bob Dylan and Devendra Banhart name her as their favorite singer. A press release I received today says, "Green Rocky Road is as close as we’ll ever get to hear the record Karen Dalton would have made in 1963." Instead, the album will be released June 10th, 2008! It goes on to say:
Discovered on the same reel-to-reel tapes that yielded the live performances comprising the Cotton Eyed Joe release, 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 (and often overdubbing herself), 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.
The release of Green Rocky Road fills in the lacunae in the rightly romanticized mythos of the late folk music legend Karen Dalton and goes a long way in clarifying her crucial role in the evolution of modern acoustic music from “folk” source materials. The only formal studio recordings made during her lifetime -- released in 1969 and 1971 respectively -- were thoroughly dissected upon their recent re-release. As wonderful as these albums were, they captured Karen in relatively awkward circumstances. Green Rocky Road, along with last year's Cotton Eyed Joe, provide a rare glimpse of Karen Dalton circa 1962 and 1963 at her most pure, most powerful, and at ease. These recordings, released by Megaphone Music, document her unique artistry at the time she was profoundly influencing the likes of Fred Neil, Tim Hardin and Bob Dylan.
That's all the details I have at this time, except these videos were included with the press release. If I find a tracklisting or album art, I will make a new post about it.
It Hurts Me Too: http://youtube.com/watch?v=y-BIKjypNsE
God Bless The Child: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jlw6S-IYSmE
Blues Jumped The Rabbit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oRJyffGdIY
My Trusted MOGs
says the video is gone. : (
My Trusted MOGs
for some reason, these youTube vids have disable embedding. and it looks like youTube got smart coz you can't just insert the video code into another youTube embed code. so, i replaced it with just the link. it's the only version of this video on youTube, so accept no substitute!
My Trusted MOGs
wow....really dig this. That twelve string is incredible.