The list of stunning performances never caught on tape likely goes on for miles, spanning every genre and period of modern music.
Fortunately, one of the ones that didn’t get away will soon see CD release, thanks to renewed interest in folk singer Karen Dalton, an elusive figure of the 1960s folk revival.
A cult has sprung up around Dalton in recent years, with praise flowing from hipster neo-folkies Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom, and modern rock/roots icons Nick Cave and Lucinda Williams. Each lauds Dalton’s uniquely haunting, bluesy voice, which hews closer to Billie Holliday than Bob Dylan.
“I don’t think it’s her story, or the production on her records that gets to people, but just her voice,” said Mark Linn, head of Delmore Recordings. “It’s an instrument unto itself.”
On Tuesday, Nashville-based Delmore will issue “Cotton Eyed Joe,” a double CD recorded at a 1962 Dalton concert at The Attic in Boulder.
Joe Loop, who engineered the set and ran the small coffeehouse across the street from the University of Colorado, said Dalton magnetized anyone in her presence, despite never recording her own material and often performing with only a banjo or 12-string guitar.
“She was just a really innovative musician. She sang folk songs like nobody else,” Loop, 68, said from his home in Bloomington, Ind. “Most of the stuff she made hers. It’s not too surprising to me that even before younger musicians noticed her, other musicians always loved playing with her.”
Those other musicians include folk-rock legends Bob Dylan and Fred Neil, friends of Dalton’s in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early ’60s. Despite Dalton’s obvious talent and the respect of fellow troubadours, she only issued two recordings in her life: The accidental full- length “It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You Best” (1969) and “In My Own Time” (1971), her only proper studio album.
That makes Loop’s recording at the Attic even more special.
“It captures Karen in this raw, untouched state and makes you feel like you are in the room with her,” said Linn. “It’s like an archaeological find, unearthed, dusted off, with the bones still perfectly intact.”
The early ’60s were a fruitful time for folk music in Boulder. The town already had a reputation in New York and California as an ideal place to stop off while traveling. Performers like David Crosby, Michael Cooney, Judy Roderick and Michael Bloomfield played The Attic, many of them regularly. Harry Tuft of the Denver Folklore Center would supply them with guitars, strings and picks.
When Karen Dalton showed up hours before opening time one day, Joe Loop decided to humor her request for an audition. She pulled out her red Gibson 12-string and convinced him to give her a regular show, becoming a friend of Loop’s while she lived in a cabin outside Boulder with her daughter.
“I always tried to book some of our better draws on the weekends, and when Karen came she was obviously as good as any of them, or better. But her name appeal wasn’t all that great,” Loop said. “I got her in on weekends when I could, and all the festivals I could. There were enough people around that understood where she was musically, for sure.”
The people at Dalton’s 1962 performance may not have realized how lucky they were. But the release of “Cotton Eyed Joe,” spearheaded by French fan Stéphane Bismuth, could change that. A meticulous remastering at Abbey Road Studios has restored much of the reel-to-reel tape, and a DVD of rare footage helps communicate Dalton’s live presence.
“It’s something I knew for years that people ought to hear,” Loop said.
For Dalton, who died in 1993 at age 55 after many years of struggling with drugs, it’s both a fitting epitaph and an invitation to new life.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com
