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[people chattering]
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[guitar strumming]
♪ Some like white or yellow
♪ Some crave black or brown
♪ The man I'm craving
♪ Won't never turn me down
♪ Won't never turn me
♪ When the blues jumped up a rabbit ♪
♪ Rabbit he'll run a mile
♪ Little rabbit
♪ Crying like a newborn child
[birds chirping]
- With Karen Dalton, there's a demand
made upon the listener.
It's not background music.
Whether you like it or not, you have to enter her world
and it's a despairing world.
It's a dark world
and some people are happy to go to places like that
and other people aren't.
[gentle music]
- [Woman] Part of her was the sweetest, most nurturing,
loving person.
The other side, was an entirely different person altogether.
She didn't like that dark side,
but she knew that kind of existed.
- [Bob] My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton.
She was a tall white blues singer and a guitar player,
Funky, lanky, sultry.
Karen had a voice like Billy Holiday
and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed
and went all the way with it.
- [Man] Some people were deliberately trying to be stars.
I would say that Karen Dalton was a person,
that was deliberately avoiding having to
deal with the popular music industry.
- [Man] Karen doesn't have a complete body of work.
There's not that many photographs.
There's not that many videos of her performing.
Some of the incompleteness and the gaps
in Karen's output, may have been decisive
and part of who she was and how she expressed herself.
The thing I don't want to do, is excessively imagine
that you can interpret the fragments.
I want to be with the songs that are actually there
and to try to delight in the legacy
of what's actually there.
It's emotional and that's what makes the songs lasting.
[gentle music]
[birds chirping]
- [Angel] The changes come too fast to grasp and master,
but too slow to satisfy the hunger.
I long to prove, I long to show, I long to give,
but all within these great hopes lays a trembling body,
a sleep that reveals buried dreams
and a mind that is only human.
There's a picture of that beautiful pony
my mother bought me.
It was an absolutely gorgeous dark
butter-scotchy Palomino color, but it was incredibly mean.
My mother used to call it the evil dwarf
and here in these pictures,
you can see in the background that lean to barn,
my mom built out of the old carpets and pine poles.
It was pretty cool, 'cause that lasted for years.
My mom was always the wild one out there,
riding the horses
and hanging out at the rodeo grounds with the guys.
She was raised in a strict Southern Baptist home.
She knew how people should behave
and she really enjoyed not doing it on occasion.
Curse words and things.
She was more than a little arrogant
and pretty sure that she knew what she was doing.
[laughing]
My grandmother was a nurse and my grandfather
John, was a welder.
[gentle dramatic music]
When they moved to Oklahoma, she was a baby.
It was The Depression in the dust bowl.
People were looking for work
and Oklahoma had a lot of opportunity.
[revving motor]
- [Man] She was raised in Enid, Oklahoma
during World War II as a child.
She remembers her father walking down the sidewalk
and having to get off the sidewalk for the white women,
'cause her great-grandmother who's part Cherokee.
So that prejudice, she experienced as a kid,
really informed her.
She knew the world where there are some that have,
and there are some that don't have.
♪ It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed ♪
♪ My poor feet have traveled this hot dusty road ♪
♪ On the edge of your city you'll see us hanging ♪
♪ We come with the dust and we're gone with the wind ♪
She was raised in a pretty extended family
and sort of typical of the folk tradition,
as in everybody played music.
[banjo gently strumming]
- [Abbe] My grandmother was very musical.
She loves singing hymns.
She played the violin and the piano.
- She definitely was interested in folk music
from the time she was a child.
She gravitated towards it
and she picked up every instrument
that she got a hold of.
Karen possessed, a unique and special talent
and that was always obvious from the get-go.
[banjo gently strumming]
- [Abbe] My mom did not finish high school.
She left home at a very early age, when she was 15.
That's when she married her first husband.
[gentle music]
- [Woman] She married very, very young and then had Johnny
and it didn't work out
and then married Don Dalton, had Abby.
- My mother and dad got married when she was 17,
but as she got older, she just rejected that whole,
staying home, being in a housewife thing,
Propping your husband up
and she didn't spend time looking at herself
in the mirror anymore.
No bra, no makeup.
She gave that up.
She certainly didn't fit into the mold
of women in Enid, Oklahoma.
It was a time of change.
It was just like the start of modern feminism.
There were a lot of people right then, starting to rebel.
They wanted to be painters and activists
and that's where she gravitated to, was the artists.
- The passion for her music got ignited
and she said, "This is what I wanna do"
And the flame was lit and once it was lit,
Karen made a transition from the straight life,
to being involved in this other world
and being this charismatic person.
[gentle music]
- [Angel] I don't wanna judge myself
through what my mother puts herself through,
giving me the responsibility and guilt.
I want to accept responsibility for my life.
I'm working on my own direction and destiny,
not my mother's.
- [Man] Karen realized that if she wanted
to make a career in music
would be to come to New York.
- [Abbe] My mom left me with my dad in Oklahoma.
She wanted to sing folk tunes
and she wanted to do gigs.
Be a bohemian.
♪ Surely we can learn the truth about ourselves ♪
♪ While each page you turn makes you someone else ♪
♪ No matter how I might have hoped for ♪
♪ the small things in lie
♪ Like the things made the reason ♪
♪ for chasing what's right
When she got to New York,
the folk music scene was just getting underway.
We were headed out of Elvis into something
a little bit more serious in music.
These are the people who are breaking free of that era.
- Well you're in Greenwich Village now
where people come to get away from America.
It's not jazz around here anymore,
it's folk music.
Guitar playing and banjo picking.
- Karen was the only folk singer I ever met
with an authentic folk background.
By 1960, there were a number of young folk singers,
who had listened to folk music all their lives,
but this was because of their parents,
academic, bohemian, professional or political orientation.
Karen and I were both exceptions class-wise,
to the folky scene.
Karen actually was one,
she were a folk.
- The music scene in New York was just the coffee houses,
different ones, some places there was a signup sheet
and then you just kind of wandered around the village,
all night, waiting for your turn.
They didn't have money to pay the performers.
So they pass the hat.
♪ Them that's got shall have
♪ Them that's not shall lose
♪ So the Bible says and it still is news ♪
♪ Mama may have
♪ Papa may have
♪ But God bless the child that's got his own ♪
♪ Empty pockets don't ever make the grade ♪
- Miss Dalton's voice seemed to break crazily
from her throat, like an old radio
that suddenly snaps on from dead silence.
Eerie, baleful, barren.
Beautiful.
Karen was one of the most emotionally
vulnerable performers that I'd ever seen.
She was literally transparent.
- She hit the scene harder than Dylan,
in terms of talent and impacts.
She was living in a good life situation at the time,
but when you give up the role as a parent
to be an artist, you feel guilty.
- We met in 1960, the summer of 1960.
After a couple of months,
she had started to talk about Abby.
She never mentioned her son to me ever.
So I was not aware that he existed.
- My mother and daddy, they were only together
for two years at the most.
I was probably about four and my father had custody of me.
- Karen's daughter was living in Enid, Oklahoma.
She announced that she was going to go back,
pretend to reconcile with Don and kidnap Abby.
I was not the most rational person at the time,
but I thought this was pretty insane.
- My mother showed up and said,
she was ready to get back together.
She put me in a old car that she had
and left for New York City.
I was very little, it just wasn't a kidnapping to me.
♪ See that bird in the sky
♪ He don't walk 'cause he can't fly ♪
♪ He don't walk and he don't run ♪
♪ He just flies into the sun
♪ Green green rocky road
♪ Promenade in green
♪ Tell me who do you love
♪ Who do you love
- They were driving to New York and she looked down at Abby
and saw that, oh my God, what am I doing?
And she's too little to even look out the window.
Karen said "Abby I'm so sorry that you can't see
"over the window".
Abby said, "That's all right mommy, I can see the sky".
And then she knew that she'd done the right thing.
[siren wailing faintly]
- I can remember getting to New York
and my mother, I don't know where she'd gotten the old car,
but she just left it on the street when we got there.
She had friends and we slept on their floor
and it was a terrible old apartment building.
There was a bathtub in the kitchen,
and then there was a communal toilet at the end of the hall,
that didn't work.
You had to go down the street to the Phillips 66
and sneak into their bathroom.
[gentle music]
- [Angel] I have sometimes been between walls
of unfamiliar windows,
or seen the edges of strange cities.
With tired night, open eyes.
I have walked on many rain, running sidewalks,
fumbling my fragile dreams, among reflected neon rainbows.
Hope, there will not come a time
when I lie wakeful on some huge bed.
Naked.
By myself, getting old.
[gentle melancholic music]
- There was never any money.
She wore hand me downs.
She would buy me people's old prom dresses,
to play dress up in.
For $2 you could get some old bouffant prom dress
and I'd dress up in that.
I went along with my mother everywhere she went.
She didn't have a babysitter on a regular basis,
or any money you pay for one, so yeah
I just went along and sleep in a booth.
- Abby had these face paintings and during the music,
Abby was, would crawl up in people's laps
and paint all their faces
and then go on to the next one and paint their face.
It was a really great integration of,
a mother child set.
[flickering radio]
- [Bob] If you were gonna describe your repertoire,
how would you describe it?
It's blues, sure,
but it's like even a special place in blues.
- [Karen] Sounds gloomy.
- [Bob] Well.
- [Karen] You're all red that's for sure.
- [Bob] I'm all red.
- [Karen] Are you blushing?
- [Bob] I thought it started a new category
for heart singers?
- [Karen] I have a lot of relatives,
their last name's Love.
I always thought that'd be a nice name you know?
If I was gonna change my name,
I think I'd call myself that.
Wait til I get my gold tooth.
- I'm not sure Karen really was comfortable
with having people really love her and come up to her,
"You're the greatest thing since sliced bread".
And she liked hanging out with weird people,
not with, not with star makers and stuff like that.
She seemed there, but not there,
separate from all these people that are trying to be stars.
♪ Run Maggie run run Maggie run ♪
♪ Wander through the meadows and chase the rising sun ♪
♪ Chase the rising sun
I had met John Phillips during this period
and he asked me if I wanted to form a band.
I initially tried to involve Karen in that.
So we had a couple of rehearsals which were a joke,
because pretty much all the rehearsals are spent
with Karen and John arguing about vocal parts.
Karen liked to control things
and John had to control things.
And also John had much more of a pop sensibility.
I think for Karen, some level of authenticity about music
was important and she felt that the whole thing
was being manipulated into more of a pop world
than she was comfortable with.
You know, it's obviously not gonna work with the four of us.
Eventually John brought in Denny Doherty
and then gradually through Denny,
the Mamas and the Papas things started
with Michelle and John and eventually Cass.
♪ Same old man sitting at the mill ♪
♪ The mill turns around of its own free will ♪
♪ I'm certainly glad to be at home ♪
♪ New York City continues all alone ♪
- [Host] Genius makes its own rules and Dylan is a genius,
a singing conscience and moral referee,
as well as a preacher.
He's also a very embarrassed young man now.
[audience laughing]
- I do remember my mom meeting Bob Dylan.
Somebody told my mother, "I've met this young man,
"I'd like you to meet him too, he's asked me too".
I remember him, getting out his guitar and playing,
talking to my mom about,
he was really getting into roots
and he thought that she was somebody who had root music,
you know, the female Woody Guthrie.
And she just kind of looked at him a couple of times
and commented on the fact that that's not how you play
that chord and stuff like that.
For a while, she was bitter that his root music
got successful.
I think people appreciated the fact that he was
his own song writer and she wasn't doing her own music.
She was just doing a take on other people's music.
[phone ringing]
- [Bob] Hello you're on the radio now, do you wanna be?
- [Man] I wanted to hear Ballad of a Thin Man sung by Karen.
- [Karen] Who?
- [Bob] Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man.
- [Karen] Never heard of that.
- [Man] Karen can sing along to it
and I bet you-
- [Karen] Tells us about it little bit, what is it?
- [Man] You're kidding me?
[phone banged down]
[gentle music]
- I was mystified by what Karen wanted.
Karen was a somewhat depressive individual
and could be very sullen,
but I was not particularly patient
and I was sorta like, well what do you want me to do,
kind of thing.
On the other hand,
I don't think there's anything that I could have done
that would have solved the situation.
- Some people have part of their personality
that might sabotage them.
There was something deep within her that definitely
stopped her from being successful in that way.
- [Angel] I see beauty that is not touched.
I see love that is not felt.
I see truth that is not spoken.
Someday it all shall return.
Right now I just can't bear it.
- I don't know that she ever had a great deal
of comfort performing.
So she was never an entertainer in that way.
You know where there's an awareness of the audience
and trying to relate to the audience, no way.
She was who she was.
Her music was so much a part of herself.
- I can remember being a kid in the coffee shop
and somebody would started heckling her.
She'd stop and shot right back at him,
she'd had a temper and the sound wasn't right.
The audience wasn't right.
Something was a little off.
She could blow up.
- She knew how good she was.
She knew how amazing she was
and she thought that her goodness
and amazingness was so obvious, vast and apparent
that anyone with a brain in their head
could not possibly do anything but being enthralled to it.
I mean, okay, if the world actually worked that way,
but you know, unfortunately it doesn't.
♪ And baby put your hand in mine ♪
♪ I got something to tell you darlin' ♪
♪ I wanna change your mind
♪ If things are going wrong for you ♪
♪ You know it hurts me too
♪ One thing darling I need you to understand ♪
♪ I don't wanna boss you baby
♪ I want you to be a man
♪ And if things are going wrong for you ♪
♪ You know it hurts me too
♪ You go home and you can't along ♪
♪ Come back to me darlin' where I live at your home ♪
♪ And if things are going wrong for you ♪
♪ You know it hurts me too
♪ I love you baby
♪ Ain't got a mind without you
♪ Darling I can't be satisfied
♪ And if things are going wrong for you ♪
♪ You know it hurts me too
- [Abbe] When the tooth got knocked out,
that was the boyfriend that caught my mom
and Richard fooling around on him.
And yeah, a fight ensued and she got punched in the face.
- I don't wanna make a graphic story out of that.
It was an ugly scene and then we left
and she left him and went with me and we went away.
Terrible memory.
- [Abbe] And things in New York City weren't working.
- She was just doing the wrong thing to make it.
She was very frustrated with the mechanism
of getting known
and we were poor and starving,
not making any money.
And she said, "Joe Loop got this coffeehouse in Boulder".
So moved up to Colorado.
- [Angel] Take advantage of the opportunity
to spend time in the country.
Away from distractions caused by diverse needs.
Use the time to create a new mythology,
grab your possibilities and make them realities.
♪ Are you leaving for the country ♪
♪ You say the city brings you down ♪
♪ Leave the iron cloud behind
♪ And feel the circus moving on ♪
♪ Are you leaving for the country ♪
♪ I know a little country town
♪ Where dogs are sleeping in the cold ♪
♪ And flagpoles fallen down
♪ High and fine
♪ Sold the wheel and time
♪ Spread their weight and let the planet spin ♪
♪ Do you feel like something's not real ♪
♪ Let the spirit move you again ♪
♪ Are you leaving for the country ♪
- New York was something she would tolerate.
She goes, "You could take Manhattan
"and lose it in the Rocky mountains
"and not even know it's there".
She could make a home for herself
and that was her lifelong dream.
- [Abbe] It was great living in the mountains
and just had everywhere to roam around
and horses to ride.
- I mean it was idealistic.
It was just the most peaceful thing.
That was an amazing time in my life.
[gentle upbeat music]
- [Abbe] He had the new group of young friends
who came in and played music with her.
- There was a group of people who were musicians in Boulder,
and we would play at each other's houses.
There would be usually a gathering of some sort,
like a barbecue or like a potluck.
Go from cabin to cabin in the mountains, play music.
- People would play music and drink beer
and she would cook a big meal.
Like maybe something like beans and corn bread.
- And Karen made the best beans in the whole world.
I don't know what in the world she put in those beans,
but she made Oklahoma beans like I'd never had in my life.
She had a nice homey touch.
It was like counterculture in a way,
I mean, most people didn't know that existed.
- [Peter] Karen did other people's songs
and she always felt free to have her way with it.
She could see things that were not always obvious
to other people.
- [Man] Some of the selections of her songs,
they're pretty eclectic where they might come from.
- She had that great repertoire of little known
country songs that I've never heard before, or since.
But then I remember listening to Billy Holiday all the time.
♪ But God bless the child
♪ That's got his own
- I think she's always had her ear open
for things that appealed to her.
- She sang my song, Are you Leaving for the Country.
I sang her that song and she liked it.
I don't remember sitting down
and teaching it to her or anything.
I was a little disappointed because
she changed the chords in the bridge and...
- She always has an original stamp.
It's never like some other version, you know,
vocally instrumentally, always.
- Part of her interpretive skill is finding
these nuanced silences in her performances.
She never over sings.
Her resistance to writing songs,
I would rather see it as a really decisive,
artistic interpretation.
I interpret these songs.
I make something out of them, I inhabit them.
It has to do with her living the songs a little bit.
- She wrote poems that people made into songs.
I don't know why she never wrote a song
and the music and the cords and the whole thing.
She could have done some of those poems as songs.
She would have been amazing doing that.
I think she believed in her talent,
but she was fragile in other ways.
- It was an odd blend of self-confidence
and a lack of confidence and Karen wasn't a person I think,
that wanted people to know all the cards
that were in her deck.
♪ If I should leave you
♪ Try to remember all the good times ♪
♪ Long days filled with sunshine ♪
♪ And just a little of bit of rain ♪
♪ If I should look back
♪ I'll remember all the good times ♪
♪ Long days filled with sunshine ♪
♪ And just a little bit of rain ♪
♪ Just a little bit of rain
- In terms of money,
she could have used some more money yeah.
People have priorities.
So her priority was to live the lifestyle
that was enabling her to create.
Poverty was difficult,
but she was so honestly, totally devoted
to the creation process.
- It wasn't this thing that was motivated by
desire to succeed.
It's what she did.
And she played all the time in these
social family-like situations.
That was my favorite way of listening to her,
doing those arrangements.
They were so strong.
- Karen could hit the ball right out of the park,
on a regular basis in her own environment,
when she was ready.
- She once said that her ideal performing situation
would be, she'd been in her living room,
with friends and playing music
and then somehow the living room would be
put on a huge stage,
which would be surrounded by
a massive audience who would be watching
in wrapped attention, while she ignored them totally
and just did whatever she wanted to do.
- [Angel] To say I thrived on attention.
Being the hub with a group of people,
the magnet, the connecting fiber,
is accurate.
[gentle haunting music]
[Tim singing]
- Her soulmate, musically was Tim Harden.
♪ If I listened long enough to you ♪
♪ I'd find a way to leave but it's all true ♪
♪ Knowing that you lied straight faced while I cried ♪
- [Man] Tim Harden,
an immensely talented singer, songwriter.
Some of his songs were covered later on by
important artists, famous artists,
Reason to Believe in particular,
If I Were a Carpenter, these songs became hits,
performed by other artists.
Tim had the house in Jamestown, about 15 minutes away.
He came out to see us and hang out.
- [Man] They spent a lot of time together.
They did drawings together.
They did songs together.
She was closer to Tim than anyone else.
- [Abbe] I think he learned a lot from her too.
They had a kind of a back and forth there.
♪ If I take away my dream would you still find me ♪
I think at one time they were thinking together
they would make an album.
They never did.
- [Man] Be hard to imagine them together
for any prolonged period of time,
because they were both so intense.
- [Angel] We used to play a lot in Colorado.
When he left my house, I was never sure I'd seen him again.
He's such a terrible driver.
He had an accident about once a week.
♪ If I listened long enough to you ♪
♪ I'd find a way to believe that it's all true ♪
♪ Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried ♪
♪ Still I look to find a reason to believe ♪
- Karen always liked her beer
and she always liked to smoke a little pot.
And that was her basic drug diet.
But I think, there were hard drugs going on.
[gentle music]
- [Abbe] I think it may have been started
when she was spending so much time
with Tim harden and he was on methadone.
I'm sure she got him to share.
- If there was speed around,
they would do speed including me,
but that's a needle drug you know?
- She was unable to get away from those addictions
because of this incredible angst that she had.
She believed the world was a hopeless place
and in some ways I can totally understand that.
I mean, this world is not an easy place
and for some sensitive people, it can be unbearable.
- We were separated.
She was up in Summerville with Abby.
She came to the door one night drunk
and was beating on the door and I wouldn't open it.
And the police came and took her to the jail.
She was furious with me after that,
because Abby was alone up in the cabin.
- I don't know whether it was an argument with somebody,
or a DUI, but she got picked up by the cops.
So I got to stay a couple of nights with some stranger,
who was watching kids for the cops
and then they let her loose and I was back.
But I had such a bizarre childhood,
cops waking me up and taking me to some strange lady's home,
wasn't all that strange.
[gentle melancholic music]
- [Angel] My heart is a jack hammer drilling,
tearing up the pavement,
the pavement of people's lives,
muscles contract trying to contain the pieces.
Behind my eyes the throbbing warns.
[melancholic music]
- The years I was with her,
really had highs and lows.
We used to argue, but I don't know what it was about.
I literally can't remember a single argument,
except we were apart and together.
Oh gosh, three or four times easily over the years.
It was kind of like taking almost a lifetime
and pushing it into about five years.
Being poor had a lot to do with it probably,
if I had real money,
we could have had a different life.
I don't know how we even survived.
We were driving through Denver, fighting about something.
So when we stopped at a stop light or something,
I got out of the car and walked away
and never saw her again.
We had it pretty good up in the mountains and all,
but I don't think she was content.
- [Angel] Early one morning,
the blues slipped away
and left me no place to hide in Colorado.
- [Abbe] She decided she's going to go back to New York,
try the other side.
So I got in the car and then she dropped me off in Oklahoma
and went on to New York.
[gentle music]
- [Man] She wanted to go to New York
and start in the music scene again.
She wanted to make a record.
[static crackling]
- [Bob] I mean, it's bad enough if you know that
you can do any job well and you can't find a place to do it.
- [Karen] I really, I get thrilled by people
who make their own records.
I just think that's a great thing to do.
Like some people can't stand to go to a recording session
and just sit there because of that,
everybody play over and over again.
Some little part or something.
I dig it.
- [Bob] Yeah, must drive you crazy.
- [Karen] We were offered some free time
at this little studio, downtown Blue Rock.
We just went in there, it was spur of the moment.
I really liked it and especially for playing live,
which we were doing.
- [Bob] Well, I'd like to hear some more music.
If you wanna play some more.
[Karen laughing]
♪ Making love has been as much as I could hope it would be ♪
♪ Every night has been like one night to me ♪
♪ You've got me feeling
♪ The feeling you gave me
- We did two recordings.
The first one we recorded in the way that she was by far,
the most comfortable, sitting in a circle,
almost like in a living room,
except this was a big studio.
- But doesn't seem to me that you hear this music
and you go, oh yeah, that sounds exactly like
traditional music.
It doesn't, but then, something about persona
and the kind of conservation of old tunes
that she was all about.
It's like she embodies this traditional approach to music.
♪ Just one more night makes no difference ♪
♪ As long as there's another night ♪
♪ To make right what you did wrong ♪
- [Florence] My suggestion would be,
to go out and buy an album called
It's so Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love you the Best.
It's been out a couple of weeks
and I've yet to hear anyone mention it,
or to hear one cut from it on the radio.
Karen Dalton has to be classified as a folk singer,
but her texture is the antithesis of Joan Bias'
boring clarity.
It is plain, earthy,
insinuating, scarily real.
Sometimes when I'm not at all in the mood,
the record makes me feel like crying.
Maybe it's just me,
but a Joan Baez or a Joni Mitchell
could never do that to me.
- LSD.
Psilocybin.
- She did release her first album in 1969,
by this point, trends were changing
and folk music was in fact declining by 1964, 1965.
- [Woman] I want to see Mick Jagger, goddamn.
- [Man] So now you have someone like Karen Dalton,
who is reinterpreting traditional music
with her blues-weary voice.
Increasingly, she was on the margins in the terms
of her popularity and her style.
- Certainly wasn't successful from a financial
point of view.
Those kinds of records don't make much money.
My guess would be, that she preferred the first recording
'cause it was much closer to what she was.
The second record had more contemporary material
and a lot of them to me, were songs she hadn't done before.
- [Interviewer] What does it cost
to put one of these things together?
- A fortune.
- [Interviewer] A fortune? - Right.
- And I suppose the returns a lot too?
- Yeah, we've probably,
I don't know what the returns will come up to
up to what it's costing us.
- Yeah, well round figures.
- Point is that it's happening.
Couple of million dollars.
In 1971, I received a call from
the head of Paramount Records.
They brought me up and asked me if I'd be interested in
running Paramount Records.
I had no background in the record business
and I wasn't really that interested in taking that on.
So I passed on the opportunity, but in lieu of that,
I agreed to take a production deal with them.
That morphed into a record label.
The first two artists that I signed were Billy Joel
and a guy named Velvet Turner.
Karen was the third artist.
- I was in high school and my mom
had some money cause she was gonna do this record,
with Michael Lang and everybody.
So she wanted Lee and I to come with her.
We were going to be a family.
She was gonna get a house.
She had a little bit of money
and I could bring my horse.
So she bought this old pickup truck
and we had this old horse trailer
and took the horse up there
and she did a pretty good job of finding a place
for the horse to stay,
not so good for us for awhile.
Rented a house that was kind of cold and nasty
but then we ended up staying in Tim Harden's house
for the rest of our stay, horse and all.
They were just, they were partying too.
We'll do some coke and cut some records.
- [Man] Take one, Karen Dalton.
[people chattering]
- The second recording was quite different.
Mike Lang was a very influential producer by then,
after Woodstock, so it was very exciting.
-[Michael] You want me to do it [indistinct]
-[Karen] Go again.
♪ I'm just telling the truth
♪ I can't show you no kind of proof ♪
♪ It's got me down
♪ I'm just singing this song
♪ I wouldn't do anything wrong
♪ It's got me down
Well, the sound of the record is completely different,
just by virtue of it being done in that kind of studio
and in that way.
It's much more produced,
a lot more impersonal in a way.
I don't think she was super comfortable.
- Karen's approach to music was unique I think,
certainly in the folk world
and I always thought that if that quality that she had
could be captured properly,
that that could really turn into something mainstream
and be successful for her, but it never got there.
- [Abbe] When she was dealing with producers
and record company people,
she just didn't really understand
where they were coming from
and I don't think they understood her music.
When she felt she was right,
she was just gonna stand up for it.
She could blow up real easily I think at a lot of times.
- There's this rumor that they called it
In My Own Time because she rarely
turned up in the studio on time,
but I think that's reductive.
In My Own Time can be a declaration of her saying,
I resist being corralled into your studio perfection.
I'm the artist at the center of this project.
I think there's real potential for empowerment
to be the sign of that title.
- In My Own Time did not sell particularly well.
If it had sold well,
we would have been shouting from the rooftops.
I think it was a cult album.
It was an album for folkies.
It was recognized by other artists
and I think it's endured as a very special work of art.
- I was driving around and I had this cassette on
and Something's on Your Mind, came on
and through the course of that song,
I had to stop the car, drive to the side of the road
and I was in tears.
I really felt a kind of shift in myself
when I heard this song and it really changed
a lot of how I looked at music
and I think that The Bad Seeds have been attempting
to write that song for years now.
♪ Yesterday any way you made it was just fine ♪
♪ So you turned your days into night time ♪
♪ Didn't you know you can't make it ♪
♪ Without ever even trying
♪ And something's on your mind isn't it ♪
♪ Let these times show you that you're breaking up the lines ♪
♪ Leaving all your dreams too far behind ♪
♪ Didn't you see
♪ You can't make it without ever even trying ♪
The thing about the song it wasn't that it was sad
that made me cry.
It was that it was perfect.
There's something about human achievement
when it reaches so high in such a casual way,
and could do something that is so utterly perfect.
[gentle music]
- [Karen] Oh that was really fun.
- [Bob] That's your song?
- [Karen] I really enjoyed that.
Dino Valente wrote that song for me.
- [Bob] Oh wow.
- [Karen] And I heard him sing it once,
I don't think anybody's ever heard him sing it,
which he did just wonderfully
and he sold it to me right away, yeah.
- [Bob] Wonderful.
- [Karen] I get stuck on songs that way.
I always have a current love that I'm,
that's the only song I wanna play.
The only one I wanna hear.
- She got it the way she wanted it
and it came out right and that was her genius.
That song was a high point in her musical life.
[upbeat music]
- Mike Lang had chosen her to open for Santana
on their tour.
Now Santana was hurdling towards number one or something.
I think she was probably real pleased and nervous.
So I think there was a lot of hope
for getting her known and...
♪ Take me to your darkest room
♪ Close every window and lock every door ♪
♪ The very first moment I heard your voice ♪
♪ I'd be in darkness no more
♪ Take me to your most barren desert ♪
♪ A thousand miles from the nearest sea ♪
♪ The very first minute I saw your smile ♪
♪ It would be like heaven to me ♪
Mike put a pretty good group of a backup musicians
behind Karen,
but the potential of that group wasn't seen
by the audience at all.
They were invariably very large concert halls
to accommodate Santana.
It's about as huge a difference
you can imagine from anywhere that Karen played,
where she was surrounded by friends.
It was almost like she was trying to do
what she did in the living room.
It seemed like an awful fit.
With Karen being on such an impersonal stage,
the quality of the music didn't project.
I'm sure she must have taken it hard.
♪ In California
♪ They say you'll be mine
There was one incident on that tour.
The musicians all got on stage.
Karen was in her dressing room
and we're getting closer and closer.
"Where's Karen ?"
"She's in her dressing room".
I mean, I can just imagine
that she was in some kind of uneven state.
[crowd cheering]
They started yelling for Santana.
Me, I was not a professional in any way.
I had no idea.
I was just standing there going what now?
[crowd cheering]
And Karen never came out.
That tour was the beginning of the end.
[typewriter pinging]
- [Angel] Too much confidence.
Refusal to sacrifice security,
listen to too many people.
All of them are wrong.
Thinking youth will last forever,
thinking you'll succeed without effort.
You haven't even tried.
- I come to New York with my 12 string Martin guitar in 71.
I've been in Manhattan for two days.
I know one person, Peter Stampfell
and he invited me over and I brought my guitar
and he gave me that little shot of Jack Daniels
and then Karen Dalton walks in.
So Karen has her boots.
She pulls out a syringe
and shoots up a bunch of methamphetamine.
I had seen drugs before and I had certainly taken drugs,
but she was just so cavalier about it, I was impressed.
So that was my first meeting with Karen Dalton.
After that, then Karen and I started seeing
more of each other.
It was kind of like a slow moving ship
and then one night we just held each other
and one thing led to another
and it seemed like it really meant a lot to each of us.
- Romantic story.
They're both coming down from speeding, feeling awful
as one does feel after you've been up for several days
and they both kind of like collapse into each other's arms
and had simultaneous orgasms.
- That's true.
[people laughing]
How the hell did he know?
I spent seven years with Karen
and I remember playing music all the time.
We'd play till four in the morning.
So there'd be all kinds of musicians gravitating there,
buying some speed.
I mean...
Sometimes it would get kind of crazy.
[gentle dramatic music]
- The Holy Modal Rounders were recording,
and she was going to do a harmony on the song.
And so she went off to shoot up before the recording
and we're waiting, everything's set up
and where's Karen, where's Karen, where's Karen?
And someone goes to see how Karen's doing
and Karen couldn't find a vein,
that's how Karen was doing.
So, Steve Weber my old partner
had a legendary talent for finding someone's vein.
So if you needed a Weber,
like I can't find a vein, call for Weber
he can find a vein blindfolded.
So, Weber was stopping off to the bathroom
and hit her on the first try.
And then she started convulsing and grabbed the sink
and pulled it off the wall.
So that was the--
And then came in and did this beautiful harmony.
- That time she had a contract,
she was supposed to produce three albums.
The idea was to work and get material ready for her records.
But Karen would be in a funk,
which I now would say is a depressive episode
and that was hard.
- I was proud and happy to be a member of her backup band,
but an unfortunate pattern emerged,
we'd rehearsed for several weeks
and on that night of the gig,
she'd be too exhausted to get out of bed
and there she'd stay.
And after that happened for the third time in a row,
I bailed.
- Karen was trying to see if she could build on her
two records and maybe do a third record,
or maybe start getting some gigs around New York.
She convinced me to go out there and hang out and practice.
So I did and I must have been there several weeks.
Nothing was really going on.
You know, some days, no practice at all.
I felt that what was going on wasn't worth
just staying indefinitely away.
So I started telling Karen,
"I think I'm gonna go".
She did not like that idea.
We were very, very close musically
and we were really good friends too
and I think she pissed that I abandoned her
and that was the last time I ever saw her.
- I would go up to the record company,
Golf and Western building every week,
Karen would get her check
and then after about two years of this,
we called her in the office and said,
"We want you to sign a statement saying
"that you were not prepared to record these records".
So, Karen and I talked about it,
I said, "Karen, you and I both know this is total bullshit.
"Screw them".
She was discouraged and disappointed.
It was very upsetting to her.
She wasn't a showbiz kind of gal
and I think the joy of it escaped her.
- On this course of getting this opportunity
and making the first album
and making the second album and doing the tour,
something definitely stopped that curve.
You can't help but think that
as she got involved in drugs more,
it's not just the music, it's the whole life.
The energy that's pushing someone,
can really be diffused.
- When she would get feeling down,
she would try to self-medicate definitely.
If Karen drank to numb,
she would drink the whole bottle.
Somebody brought some speed over, that would help,
because that would motivate her.
But what I thought is if I loved her enough,
she would be happy and my love could lift her up.
- [Angel] I slept till noon today.
I didn't even make the effort to get out of bed,
the alarm clock rang.
I shut it off and covered up my head.
I didn't want to wake up remembering the things I said,
I am becoming cynic, spoiled in this wasteland.
- I got to a point where I wanted a family.
I wanted things that Karen wasn't in a position to provide
for me personally and so we broke up
and then you probably know more about
what she did after me than I do.
- [Angel] You know, in my heart I'm afraid to think.
But if I went out tomorrow and landed a contract
for another album, you would be terribly in love
with me the day after.
However, I'm not in shape to do that for myself
and it would take a while for me to get the desire
and confidence to do anything by myself, musically.
Tonight, I was crying about the count
in my spoon and how lousy it had been the day before,
actually crying.
I don't know.
I love you as much as I can.
♪ So goodbye all my sweetheart
♪ I'm going away
♪ I'm may come back to see you
♪ Some old rainy rainy day
♪ Oh in the evening in the evening darling ♪
♪ When the sun goes down
- At some point she called me and she said,
"I'm on the street and I have no place to go.
"Can you help me?"
I said, "Well, let's get you out.
"Well I've got a friend in Texas
"who runs her substance abuse program".
I was working with one of her friends in New York City
and we got her cats from Pennsylvania.
We got her guitars out of Hawk.
We got her on the airplane and we sent her down to Texas
to this rehab center.
She was there like two days and she called me up,
she goes "I'm not staying in this fucking place".
She was kicking and miserable and she just threw a fit
and I said, "Okay, Karen, it's your life.
"If this is what you want, we'll make it happen for you.
"I love you".
And I never spoke with her again.
- She showed up here one morning.
I never seen here so drunk.
I mean, she was going to treat me very loving to me
absolutely terrifying, this back and forth
and back and forth.
Don't believe I saw her after,
she showed up here that morning.
Yeah, I'd never seen her that far gone.
- When I was pregnant with my first child,
I called her up and said, "Mom, I'm having a baby"
and she says, "You can't I'm too young.
"You're stupid, why would you do that?"
She was not ready to be a grandma.
So that was it.
[melancholic music]
- She wrote out songs, but here's a song that she wrote.
This is kind of significant.
I'm gonna frame this one,
Poem For Strung-Out Poet.
Not dead yet, not dead and love not dead.
Fix a tragic mask on bitter spikes.
Love you are so beautiful.
Sleeping through the first April storm,
remembering pain, waking in the cold green wind.
It will be spring now, soon it will be spring.
I got to spend more time with her
than many other people ever did.
What was the typical day in the life of Karen like?
Like get up late, make coffee,
adjust your chemistry so you're ready for the day.
Do whatever absolute chores have to be done
and then you're ready to do your art for the day.
So she would try to get herself into that mindset
where she could either write or play,
or create and these moments were rare for her.
There was a time in 85 or 86.
I had my two kids with me.
She thought she had some kind of flu.
She didn't know what it was, but she hollered,
"Get the kids out of here.
"I got some kind of a weird flu and it might be catching".
And that's shortly after that,
she was diagnosed with the AIDS.
- I was saying that she at one point
picked up AIDS from dirty needles.
Why not?
I don't think that she like most people ever,
believed that she would die.
She never met her grandkids.
She was getting sick by the time,
they were pretty much old enough to go anywhere.
- [Man] There was a certain ostracism which came
with having the disease at that time.
Everybody was terrified of it.
She felt a lot of her friends had abandoned her,
or that were afraid to be near her.
That was a bad moment I remember,
wiping away a tear and hugging her then.
- When she was too sick to do music anymore,
she told her friend that music had been the only way
she could relate to people
and now she had to find some other way to do that.
- [Angel] I am unable to have visitors,
to be sought out, to be contacted here.
I expect no knock or ring for me.
It contributes so much to my feeling of not having a home.
I feel like I did at my surprise 16th birthday,
when nobody showed up.
- She made the very difficult decision that
I'm going to be selling my instruments.
She wasn't going to be playing anymore and she knew it.
She asked me to set up her estate.
She signed the bill of sale for all her
intellectual property rights,
so there wouldn't be any questions about that
after she went and she gave me these boxes of stuff,
which was her selection of songs and her poems.
So she, in a sense, poured out the passion into writing
that she would have done for the music.
[gentle music]
- [Angel] With the passing of my youth,
I can see now the great mistake youth almost always makes.
It seemed, felt as though I had all the time in the world,
I'll kick later, pay later,
learn to make it later
and then, when later finally came.
[TV audience cheering]
- [Announcer] And now, television's most excited hour
of fantastic prizes.
The fabulous 60 minute Price is Right.
- The Price is Right was on and I'll never forget it.
Bob Barker sold his last two packages
and the final showcase showdown.
Show's over, so okay time to wake Karen.
I thought she was sleeping.
I shook her to wake her up and she didn't wake up.
♪ If I should leave you
♪ Time to remember all the good times ♪
♪ Long days filled with sunshine ♪
♪ And just a little bit of rain ♪
- I was devastated, not surprised
and it had been a number of years,
but that was hard, very hard to hear.
I like to remember, A Little Bit of Rain.
I think it sums it up.
If I should leave you now try to remember the good times
warm days filled with sunshine
and just a little bit of rain.
♪ Just a little bit of rain
- I asked her about having a funeral,
or a memorial service and she said,
"I won't be here.
"I won't care".
That was her attitude,
she thought that once she was gone, that was going to be it.
Karen had no idea that anybody cared about her music,
no idea at all.
♪ When I first came to town they called me the roving jewel ♪
♪ And now they've changed their tune ♪
♪ Call me Katie Cruel
- There's something about her voice that
an immediate connection can be made to it.
My kid who's 16...
I was playing just a bunch of stuff in the car
when we're driving around LA actually,
and Katie Cruel came on and he's like,
"What's that?" It was immediate.
I could see this sort of, this little thing go on with him.
I hear it all the time in my house now,
he just plays that song over and over again.
Which felt really nice to sort of hand it down
to another generation,
but there's something about her songs
that have that kind of incredible effect.
- I think what makes Karen such a standout artist,
is her point of view.
It's not really just the sound of her voice
and the tone that she was born with.
It's the choices that she makes.
She's feeling it in a very pure manner
and she's not singing it for you,
she's singing it for herself.
- As a singer with a somewhat unusual voice,
I really gravitate towards unusual sounding singers
and she may be the very best of them.
- I think the music itself really it sounds lame,
but really speaks for itself.
So mournful and her voice just takes it over the top.
- Around like 2007, 2008 is when I started to see
Karen's music like on the internet
and I'd be like, you should check out my grandmother,
she's this really cool blues singer
and people would be like, "Oh no I have that.
"Like I listen to that already".
Joanna Newsom, I remember her listing
as one of her influences, Karen Dalton
and that was really exciting for me to hear,
because I like to Joanna Newsom's music.
My brain basically blew up.
Like it really rocked my gourd.
[laughing]
- I've always enjoyed her music.
I grew up with it.
It just makes me happy.
She taught me to be a very independent person.
She didn't want to give up her dream for somebody else's.
Hey women have been fighting the same fight since then.
♪ When I first came to town they bought me drinks aplenty ♪
- Karen as a person was tough as nails.
Karen as a singer and musician extremely fragile.
- She had a tough life and not a very happy one.
So there was a sadness to it,
almost like a blues part of her character and her music,
that I think came out
and maybe that's part of the fascination.
- If she could feel a certain way in her music
and play it in such a way that you feel that way,
then that's really what the magic,
the most magical thing you can do in music.
She had a deep and profound and loving soul
and she was able, you can see it.
You can hear it in her music.
[haunting violin]
[gentle music]
- The fire was started on the first floor
and engulfed the whole building very quickly.
And it was well advanced by the time
we became aware of it.
[exhaling]
Tried to rescue the dog and were not successful.
Everything within range of the building caught on fire.
All of the artifacts of Karen's that were there, are gone.
Her poems are gone, the tapes are gone.
But the good thing that you were there
not many months before and made a photographic record of it.
So thank God these are not lost for all time.
- [Man] I find it fascinating to look through that stuff
and realize that, this a real treasure.
And the most valuable thing about the treasure
is her point of view.
And I think when people are interested in Karen,
they shouldn't be trying to focus in on things
that might've happened,
whether it was addiction or just poverty.
What was important about Karen wasn't any of that.
It was her music,
the magic and the soul that she brought to all of us.
- [Bob] I don't know whether I want to ask you
to sing you to sing yet.
I just wanted to let people know that you really were here.
- [Karen] Yeah, well, I'll be here for a while.
- [Bob] Karen Dalton, it is my great honor
and pleasure to present you this afternoon.
- [Karen] All right.
- [Bob] I know you do right though.
I don't want to suggest that you sing one of your songs.
[Karen chuckling]
- I didn't prepare,
I thought I'd do what comes to mind.
Bear with me here.
♪ Now your time is your own
♪ You be alone
♪ You'll sit in your room remembering mountains ♪
♪ Do you think the seasons change ♪
♪ Without your heart
♪ Are you dreaming
♪ Every day and night will come to your mind ♪
♪ Undeceiving
♪ You will know there is no parting without sorrow ♪
♪ I'm living in a lonely paradise ♪
♪ Since you're leaving
♪ Let the lass be beauty
♪ O by the by
♪ Has anybody seen my little you-i ♪
♪ Who stood on a green hill
♪ And threw his wish at blue
♪ With a swoop and a dart
♪ Out flew his wish and it climbed like a dream ♪
♪ Throbbing like a heart
♪ Singing like a flame
♪ Blue took it my
♪ Far beyond far
♪ And high beyond high