Karen Dalton - It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To
Karen Dalton - It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best (1969)
Artist: KAREN DALTON
Album: It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best
Released: 1969/2006
Label: Capitol - Emi - Megaphone. CD MEGA 10
Genre: Folk
Review: BOB DYLAN in 'Chronicles'
"My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky and sultry. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday's and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it. I sang with her a couple of times."
Some find Karen Dalton's voice difficult to listen to, and despite the Billie Holiday comparisons, it is rougher going than Lady Day. But Dalton's vocals aren't that hard to take, and they are expressive; like Buffy Sainte-Marie, it just does take some getting used to because of their unconventional timbre. Her debut album has a muted folk-rock feel reminiscent of Fred Neil's arrangements in the mid-'60s, unsurprising since Neil's Capitol-era producer, Nick Venet, produced this disc too, and since Dalton, a friend of Neil, covered a couple of Neil songs here ("Little Bit of Rain," "Blues on the Ceiling"). Although clocking in at a mere ten songs, it covers a lot of ground, from Tim Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Leadbelly to the traditional folk song "Ribbon Bow" and the Eddie Floyd/Booker T. Jones-penned soul tune "I Love You More Than Words Can Say." The record is interesting and well done, but would have been far more significant if it had come out five years or so earlier. By 1969 such singers were expected to write much of their own material (Dalton wrote none), and to embrace rock instrumentation less tentatively.
by Richie Unterberger (AMG) 4 1/2 stars
Tracklist:
1. Little Bit of Rain (Fred Neil) 2:36
2. Sweet Substitute (Jelly Roll Morton) 2:43
3. Ribbon Bow (Public Domain) 3:00
4. I Love You More Than Words Can Say (Eddie Floyd/Booker T. Jones) 3:33
5. In the Evening (It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best) (Public Domain) 4:32
6. Blues on the Ceiling (Fred Neil) 3:36
7. It Hurts Me Too (Mel London) 3:07
8. How Did the Feeling Feel to You (Tim Hardin) 2:55
9. Right, Wrong or Ready (Major Wiley) 2:59
10. Down on the Street (Don't You Follow Me Down) (Leadbelly) 2:21