Karen Dalton :: Shuckin’ Sugar - AQUARIUM DRUNKARD

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Karen Dalton: Shuckin' Sugar

Shuckin’ Sugar is a terrific time capsule, with a young Karen Dalton sounding already close to fully formed, her unmistakable vocals bolstering a selection of trad tunes. Her partner throughout is Richard Tucker and the duo’s harmonies run deep, finding the raw Appalachian vibes necessary to pull this kind of music off successfully. 

Bob Dylan on Karen Dalton - Chronicles Vol I

Bob Dylan, Dalton, and Fred Neil at the Cafe Wha? 1961© Fred W. McDarrah.

“My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton—She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky, and sultry. I’d actually met her before, run across her the previous summer outside Denver in a mountain pass town in a folk club. 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."—Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One, October 5, 2004.

Certainly a distinct and unique voice she has a tragic history, denied success she deserved she had many drug related problems ( the dread combination heroin and alcohol) and had been divorced twice by the time she was 21 and was lost to us in 1993 from an AIDS related illness which she had apparently battled for over eight years. She was 55. 

Further research:

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time, from filmmakers Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz

thanks to O My Soul