Film Forum

12:30   2:30   4:45   6:45   8:45

Folk singer Karen Dalton (1937–1993): her raw, sublime talent, singular, sultry voice and hauntingly soulful performances were “elemental and wrenchingly true, as unadorned as the plains of Dalton’s native Oklahoma” – The Hollywood Reporter. Her music captivated the likes of Bob Dylan (“She had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played guitar like Jimmy Reed”), Nick Cave, and Tim Hardin. Interweaving excerpts from her poetry and journals with moving interviews and rare archival performance clips, the filmmakers convey how Dalton’s fidelity to her music was as abiding as her aversion to commercialism or promotion. IN MY OWN TIME ensures the preservation of her musical legacy: “It introduces a one-of-a-kind artist to the uninitiated and celebrates her for aficionados. Above all it listens — and invites us to do the same.” – Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter

2021     85 MINS.    USA     GREENWICH ENTERTAINMENT

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund

Reviews

“Critic’s Pick. An excellent documentary… [Dalton was] an elemental musical force.”
– Glenn Kenny, The New York Times

“One of the ‘60s and ‘70s folk music’s most skilled and idiosyncratic interpreters. The unique, unhurried phrasing heard in her renditions of ‘Reason to Believe’ and ‘When a Man Loves a Woman,’ for example, make these familiar songs seem as though they’re being sung for the very first time. Most of the time, watching (the film) feels like hanging on a porch with some of Dalton’s closest confidants… In fleeting glimpses, this long-lost musician comes vividly to life.”
– Lindsay Zoladz, The New York Times

“My favorite female blues singer.”
– Nick Cave

“An unvarnished authenticity that cannot be mass-manufactured.”
– The Guardian

“Karen Dalton is a folk legend whose name is spoken with reverence on MacDougal St., in Woodstock, in Texas, or anyplace else where she has performed. The source of Karen's legend is her voice. Like Rita Coolidge whom she sounds a bit like… she sings with so much subtlety and taste that her interpretations are creations of their own. At her best her sound is hauntingly beautiful, addictive.”
– Danny Goldberg, Rolling Stone (1971, reviewing her album, In My Own Time)

“Dalton could sound like Billie Holiday, and she had the striking beauty of a Walker Evans dustbowl portrait. Fifteen years after her death her music has never been more popular. Dalton’s stormy personal life may have scared away record executives 40 years ago, but it also may be one of the reasons new fans are discovering what many of her peers knew all along.”
– Joel Rose, NPR Music (2008)