KAREN DALTON - ITS SO HARD TO TELL…

Released: 05/04/24

Originally released in 1969, It’s So Hard to Tell ... was the debut album by the preternaturally gifted Karen Dalton, the woman Bob Dylan called his favourite singer, saying, “Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.” Commercial success eluded Dalton in her lifetime, and she passed away in 1993 at the tragically young age of 55; but over the following three decades she has been discovered by a myriad of artists who’ve name-checked her as a major influence, among them Nick Cave, Devendra Banhart, Lucinda Williams, Joanna Newsom, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, and Courtney Barnett.

Setting herself apart from her peers with her distinctive, world-weary vocals, the Texas native became a fixture in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries, and on It’s So Hard to Tell ... Dalton covers a wide range of musicians, from Tim Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Leadbelly, as well as the traditional folk song ‘Ribbon Bow’, imbuing them all with her singular style.