Karen Dalton - In My Own Time (Light in the Attic)

As we are engulfed nowadays by prefabricated, pitch-corrected singers, it’s no wonder that the nakedly honest music of KAREN DALTON is in demand, revered by such new folk icons as DEVENDRA BANHART, who contributes to this disc’s liner notes. The cracked majesty of her singing, sounding so raw and vulnerable yet actually imbued with subtle craft, recalls BILLIE HOLIDAY in her final years. An acquired taste for some, but for many there’s an immediate attraction.

This 1971 album, on CD for the first time, findsher stretching beyond the folk material of her 1969 debut It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best (reissued a few years ago on Koch), with surprising soul covers played with country inflections (“When a Man Loves a Woman,” “How Sweet It Is”). But, as expected, she also leans on venerable traditional material (most notably the suddenly popular again “Katie Cruel,” also on new releases by BERT JANSCH and WHITE MAGIC) and on her many friends from the ‘60s folk and rock scenes. She sings “In My Own Dream” by PAUL BUTTERFIELD, “In a Station” by RICHARD MANUEL (THE BAND), and “Something on Your Mind” by DINO VALENTE (QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE).

This is not quite as breathtakingly good as the debut, but it nonetheless always attracts rapt new admirers when we play it at Sound Fix.