She shot up speed regularly before appearances, and once went into convulsions so hard that she pulled a sink she was holding onto out of the wall. She kidnapped her own daughter in order to return to New York and play coffee shops while the toddler crawled all over the audience. MORE FROM JEF ROUNER: A Houston indie comic predicted the new Texas abortion law a decade ago Through home videos and interviews with her daughter and former band mates, it’s easy to see her as a woman that was hard to love but captivating to be around. The promising start of her career is wonderfully chronicled in the film, which doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to detailing her wild and troubled life. There was a hardness about her that was magical, but also destructive. Her voice was absolutely haunting, a prematurely aged high-pitched blues croak coming out of a mouth missing a tooth from a domestic violence incident. Born in Bonham, Texas and reared in Oklahoma (where her Cherokee mother still had to stand aside for white people in the road), she learned folk music on the family porch instead of a classroom. Whereas many of the figures who have come down as legends were academics and students of the folk tradition, Karen was the real-life folk deal. 15 at the newly re-opened 14 Pews in Houston.ĭalton was a folk singer who was big in the Greenwich Village scene in the early 1960s. Nonetheless, it’s time to meet Karen Dalton in the documentary “Karen Dalton: In My Own Time,” screening Oct. You probably haven’t heard of her and depending on her mood that might be just the way she would like it. Her voice made Nick Cave pull over his car and cry on the side of the road.

Folk singer Karen Dalton Photo: Greenwich Entertainment

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