Dalton, whose heritage was Cherokee, was born Karen J. Cariker in Enid, Oklahoma. Her bluesy, world-weary voice is often compared to that of iconic jazz singer Billie Holiday. She sang blues, folk, country, pop, Motown - making over each song in her own style. She played the twelve string Gibson guitar and a long neck banjo.
In his 2004 autobiography, Bob Dylan wrote this in his description of discovering and joining the music scene at Greenwich Village's Cafe Wha? after arriving in New York City, New York, United States in 1961: "My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played guitar like Jimmy Reed... I sang with her a couple of times."
Dalton's second album, In My Own Time (1971), was recorded at Bearsville Studios and originally released by Woodstock Festival promoter Michael Lang's label, Just Sunshine Records. The album was produced and arranged by Harvey Brooks, who played bass on it. (Harvey Brooks played bass also on the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, on the Bob Dylan album Highway 61 Revisited and on the Richie Havens album Mixed Bag.) Piano player Richard Bell guested on In My Own Time. Its liner notes were written by Fred Neil and its cover photos were taken by Elliot Landy. Less well-known is Dalton's first album, It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (Capitol, 1969), which was re-released by Koch Records on CD in 1996.
Both Dalton's albums were re-released in November 2006: It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best, on the French Megaphone-Music label, included a bonus DVD featuring rare performance footage of Dalton. In My Own Time was re-released on CD and LP on November 7, 2006 by Light In The Attic Records.
The version of the song Something on Your Mind (composed by Dino Valenti) that is sung by Dalton on her album In My Own Time is the soundtrack during the ending credits of the 2007 film Margot at the Wedding, which was written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starred Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Known as "the folk singer's answer to Billie Holiday" and "Sweet Mother K.D.", Dalton is said to be the subject of the song Katie's Been Gone (composed by Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson) on the album The Basement Tapes by The Band and Bob Dylan. She struggled with drugs and alcohol for many years. It has been widely reported that she died in 1993 on the streets of New York City after an eight-year battle with AIDS.
However, an article in Uncut magazine confirmed that Dalton was actually being cared for by the guitarist Peter Walker in upstate New York during her last months.
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A cult singer, 12-string guitarist, and banjo player of the New York 1960s folk revival, Karen Dalton still remains known to very few, despite counting the likes of Bob Dylan and Fred Neil among her acquaintances. This was partly because she seldom recorded, only making one album in the 1960s - and that didn't come out until 1969, although she had been known on the Greenwich Village circuit since the beginning of the decade. It was also partly because, unlike other folksingers of the era, she was an interpreter who did not record original material. And it was also because her voice - often compared to Billie Holiday, but with a rural twang - was too strange and inaccessible to pop audiences. Nik Venet, producer of her debut album, went as far as to remark in Goldmine, "She was very much like Billie Holiday. Let me say this, she wasn't Billie Holiday but she had that phrasing Holiday had and she was a remarkable one-of-a-kind type of thing.... Unfortunately, it's an acquired taste, you really have to look for the music."
Dalton grew up in Oklahoma, moving to New York around 1960. Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, who was in her backup band in the early '70s, points out in his liner notes to the CD reissue of her first album that "she was the only folk singer I ever met with an authentic 'folk' background. She came to the folk music scene under her own steam, as opposed to being 'discovered' and introduced to it by people already involved in it." There is a photograph from February 1961 (now printed on the back cover of the It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best reissue) of Dalton singing and playing with Fred Neil and Bob Dylan, the latter of whom was barely known at the time. Unlike her friends she was unable to even capture a recording contract, spending much of the next few years roaming around North America.
Dalton was not comfortable in the studio, and her Capitol album It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best came about when Nik Venet, who had tried unsuccessfully to record her several times, invited her to a Fred Neil session. He asked her to cut a Neil composition, "Little Bit of Rain," as a personal favor so he could have it in his private collection; that led to an entire album, recorded in one session, most of the tracks done in one take. Dalton recorded one more album in the early '70s, produced by Harvey Brooks (who had played on some '60s Dylan sessions). Done in Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, it, like her debut, had an eclectic assortment of traditional folk tunes, blues, covers of soul hits ("When a Man Loves a Woman," "How Sweet It Is"), and contemporary numbers by singer/songwriters (Dino Valente, the Band's Richard Manuel). The Band's "Katie's Been Gone," included on The Basement Tapes, is rumored to be about Dalton.
Ribbon Bow
Karen Dalton Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To hide my hair
If I had a fancy sash
My own true love would find me fair
My red shoes would go dancing
Whe'er my fancy would
My love would wish
That he had taken me while he could
If I were like city girls
And fair with smile
Not a man in all these parts
Would know my heart
My red shoes would go dancing
Whe'er my fancy chose
I'd lark about the sidewalk
And wear them foreign clothes
If I were like city girls
If I had a fancy sash
If I had a ribbon bow
To hide my hair
If I had a fancy sash
My own true love would find me fair
The lyrics of Karen Dalton's song "Ribbon Bow" are a beautiful articulation of a longing for transformation and escape. The singer of the song imagines a different version of herself, one who is more conventionally beautiful and adorned with fancy clothing and accessories. She daydreams about how different her life would be if she had a ribbon bow to hide her hair, a fancy sash, and red dancing shoes. She imagines her own true love finally finding her fair, and laments that he didn't take her while he had the chance.
The second stanza of the song continues this thread of wishing for a different life, particularly one more like the city girls that the singer sees around her. She imagines that if she were fair with a smile like these girls, none of the men around her would know her heart. And so, she would wander around in her red dancing shoes, wearing foreign clothes and larking about on the sidewalk. The overall effect of the song is one of melancholy and longing, as the singer imagines a different, more romantic, and ultimately unattainable life for herself.
Line by Line Meaning
If I had a ribbon bow
If I had something to hide my unkempt hair
To hide my hair
To conceal my hair from being messy
If I had a fancy sash
If I had something ornate and attractive around me
My own true love would find me fair
My lover would look at me with adoration if I dressed up fancily
My red shoes would go dancing
I would dance like nobody's watching if I had comfortable shoes
Whe'er my fancy would
Wherever my imagination would take me
My love would wish
My lover would regret not taking me when he had the chance
That he had taken me while he could
He would have loved to have taken me when I was ready
If I were like city girls
If I were as sophisticated as city girls
And fair with smile
If I had a beautiful smile like theirs
Not a man in all these parts
No man in my vicinity
Would know my heart
Could understand my true self
I'd lark about the sidewalk
I'd wander around the streets, cut loose
And wear them foreign clothes
And flaunt fancy clothes from elsewhere
Contributed by Caroline M. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@aircut1
Beautiful & Authentic
@szelest3779
I can't believe this, so divine experience
@thePollyDolly
Hauntingly beautiful
@lillabeckman3854
Lyrics:
If I had a ribbon bow
To hide my hair
If I had a fancy sash
My own true love would find me fair
My red shoes would go dancing
Whe'er my fancy would
My love would wish
That he had taken me while he could
If I were like city girls
And fair with smile
Not a man in all these parts
Would know my heart
My red shoes would go dancing
Whe'er my fancy chose
I'd lark about the sidewalk
And wear them foreign clothes
If I were like city girls
If I had a fancy sash
If I had a ribbon bow
To hide my hair
If I had a fancy sash
My own true love would find me fair
@lawriecoombs6876
This is a ridiculously good record.
@pyruvicac.id_
♫ while he could ♫
@TheSeiferal
Hey everyone, if you wanna check my alternate version of this song... clink on this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEgs9d9wiYQ
;)
PS: With love and respect to Karen Dalton.
@willthrall6711
who is here after listening to joanna newsom in 2021?? lets beat covid together 👊