Karen Dalton

Karen Dalton came out of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s with a voice that was both ethereal and raw. She released her debut album 'It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best' in 1969, followed by 'In My Own Time' in 1971. Both records earned critical praise for their haunting quality, though they never found much commercial footing.

Her recordings of songs like 'Little Bit Of Rain' and 'In A Station' have a particular, almost fragile intensity. She worked with other musicians from that scene, including Fred Neil and Tim Hardin, but her sound remained distinctly her own, less a polished performance than something pulled directly from the room.

Dalton's life outside of music was difficult, marked by instability and addiction. That struggle seeped into her work, giving songs like 'Every Time I Think Of Freedom' a weight that feels lived-in rather than crafted. She drifted in and out of the music world, and her output was sparse.

She died in 1993, largely unknown to a wider audience. In the years since, those two albums have been rediscovered, and her influence has quietly grown among singers who value that kind of unvarnished, direct emotional delivery.