If I was where I would be
Then I'd be where I am not
Here I am where I must be
Where I would be, I cannot
-- Karen Dalton's arrangement of "Katie Cruel"
Editor's note: In years past, we have featured articles detailing the careers of Bonham natives soprano Roberta Dodd Crawford and influential jazz guitarist Charlie Christian; here is the third part of the trilogy. No discussion of Fannin County music trivia could be complete without the story of Karen Dalton.
Bonham, Texas -- Bob Dylan occasionally backed her up on harmonica and, according to Wikipedia, Karen Dalton was born July 19, 1937 in Bonham, Texas. Records show that her mother, Evelyn J. Fletcher Cariker, was born February 11, 1914 in Ector.
In Chronicles, Volume 1, Dylan wrote this about the queen of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s: "My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. She had a voice like Billie Holiday's and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed."
Wikipedia describes Karen Dalton as "an American folk blues singer, guitarist, and banjo player. She was associated with the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk music scene, particularly with Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, the Holy Modal Rounders, and Bob Dylan."
Hardin authored "If I Were a Carpenter."
Neil, who wrote "Everybody's Talkin'," once remarked, "All I can say is...she sure can sing the s--- out of the blues."
With a hauntingly honest sound, Dalton quickly became a regular at places like the famous folk venue Café Wha? when she showed up in Greenwich Village in the early '60s with a 12-string guitar, a long-neck banjo and a road-weary voice that sounded like she had walked every mile from Enid, Oklahoma.
Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson supposedly wrote "Katie's Been Gone," a song on the album The Basement Tapes by The Band and Bob Dylan, about Dalton. The story is that she was also the inspiration for Nick Cave's “When I First Came To Town.”
Country singer Lacy J. Dalton picked her surname as a tribute to Karen Dalton.
"Karen was tall, willowy, had straight black hair, was long-waisted and slender...what we all wanted to look like," recalled Lacy J. Dalton.
Like many gifted, introspective artists, Dalton had her share of struggles, but instead of dwelling on what went wrong, there were also things that went right for the eventual inspiration of Lucinda Williams and Joanna Newsome.
Dalton would record two albums, It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You the Best in 1969 and 1971's In My Own Time, with the latter being recorded in Bearsville Studios -- the same studio used by Janis Joplin, Todd Rundgren, Bob Dylan, and The Band.
A compilation tribute album, Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton, comprised of lyrics and poems Dalton wrote before her death, was released in 2015 by folk label Tompkins Square featuring Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams, Josephine Foster, Sharon Van Etten, and Julia Holter.
Much like Charlie Christian, very little is known about Karen Dalton in the town where she was born because her family moved to Oklahoma when Karen was very young. However, just like Christian, Dalton would eventually leave an indelible mark on music history.
"In a Station" by Richard Manual and The Band
as performed by Karen Dalton
