Forgotten song

Lauded by peers and critics, late folk singer overlooked in home state

Like many of the best things, I stumbled upon it by complete accident.

My first experience (and it is an experience) with the music of Karen Dalton came in the form of background music in Noah Baumbach’s 2007 film “Margot at the Wedding.” I didn’t particularly enjoy the film, but that voice, that sound. The song was “Something on Your Mind.” I’m certainly not the first person to praise it. Nick Cave calls it “the most extraordinary vocal” he’s ever heard. Find it. Listen to it. Soak it up.

There were moments in my youth when a single song changed me. They seemed to come more often then, when nearly everything was new. But there are those rare times when I can capture that magic again. And there are few things better than that exact moment of discovery. Imagine my further delight when I discovered that Dalton was a Cherokee girl from none other than Enid, Oklahoma. A young mother and wife, she fled Enid and headed to the super-charged folk scene of early-’60s Greenwich Village and fell in with the likes of Fred Neil and a young Bob Dylan, still doing his best Woody Guthrie impression. To get a sense of this world, head over to Circle Cinema and catch the Coen Brothers’ latest offering, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” A few years ago in his bestselling quasi-memoir, “Chronicles,” Dylan remembers those Greenwich days and Dalton in particular. “My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton.”

As the traditional folk scene waned and the world wanted more singer-songwriters, Dalton drifted. Her first album, “It’s So Hard to Tell You Who’s Going to Love You the Best” (1969), almost missed the ’60s entirely. Her second, the even more accomplished, “In Our Own Time,” arrived in 1971. And that’s it. Dalton spiraled into the all-too-common trap of drug abuse, contracted AIDS sometime in the 80s, and died penniless in 1993 at age 55.

A “cult” figure in the truest sense of the word, Dalton’s legacy lives on now thanks to a small but powerful group of advocates including critics, aging peers, and young musicians that have been lucky enough to both discover Dalton’s work and have a stage from which to spread the gospel. She remains criminally obscure in her home state. She has not been inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. That needs to change. If Color Me Badd qualifies, what’s the holdup?

Often compared to Billie Holiday, in ways both good and bad, Dalton is our own tragic songstress, plucking banjo strings and heartstrings with equal virtuosity. It’s not too late in the year for a resolution. Do yourself a favor.

Get to know Karen Dalton.

BEHIND THE MUSIC

Dalton is rumored to have been the inspiration for the song, “Katie’s Been Gone,” which appears on Bob Dylan and The Band’s 1975 album “The Basement Tapes.”

Beyond her haunting, unique voice, Dalton’s instruments of choice were the twelve-string guitar and a long-neck banjo.

Very little live footage of Dalton exists, but if you seek out her song “It Hurts Me Too” (easily found on YouTube with some savvy searching), you won’t be disappointed.