In My Own Time: A Portrait of Karen Dalton

Karen Dalton was a one of a kind American folk singer, unjustly overlooked for many years and only now starting to recover the reputation she deserves, sadly long after her death in 1993. She first gained prominence in the Greenwich folk scene of the early 60s when Bob Dylan named her as his favourite singer. But an unconventional lifestyle and unsympathetic relationship with the music industry meant she never achieved the success she deserved. This fine documentary uses exclusive audio footage and interviews key collaborators and famous fans like Peter Stampfel and Nick Cave.

‘Raised in dust-bowl Oklahoma, Dalton possessed the earthy beauty of a Dorothea Lange portrait and a weary voice that saw her compared with Billie Holiday. Her many identities – ruthlessly focused artist, ambivalent wife, drug addict – all come through in the vulnerability of her voice, but despite being one of the most influential figures to emerge from the Greenwich Village folk scene she only released two studio albums before dying of an AIDS-related illness at 55. Part biography, part autopsy, the lasting tragedy of Peete and Yapkowitz’s film is not that Dalton was ill equipped to handle fame, but that her greatness wasn’t recognised until it was too late.’

Patrick Gamble, Little White Lies magazine.