Karen Dalton

Alternate takes are often mere curiosities, but Karen Dalton's country-inflected version of "Something on Your Mind" feels genuinely revealing.

Director Robert Yapkowitz and singer-songwriter Margo Price join Bob Boilen in a live conversation about this new documentary on the folk singer.

Karen Dalton, an enigmatic artist beloved by colleagues Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, and idolized by followers like Nick Cave and Courtney Barnett, is the subject of a new film.

Patty Griffin turns an unreleased Karen Dalton song into a full-throated, gospel-tinged revelation with "All That Shines Is Not Truth."

She had a voice of striking, unusual beauty — and looks to match — yet she spent much of her life misunderstood and under-recorded. Now, 15 years after her death, the elusive folk singer's music has never been more popular.

Throughout "In the Evening," which Dalton would later record for her studio debut, she infuses a Leroy Carr song with bluesy, woozy weariness, drawing the sorrow out of every note. It's hard not to view the track through the prism of Dalton's haunted life.

Karen Dalton's In My Own Time sounds nicely fleshed out in the studio, as it showcases the singer's ability to interpret standards amid lush arrangements. But it's no surprise that the set's crown jewel is also its most haunting track: "Katie Cruel," on which Dalton gives a traditional lament its definitive reading.

It's stupefying that Karen Dalton remains, even in this crate-digging age, largely unknown: She was a singer of transfixing nuance and uncommon emotional control. If her debut album appeared new today, Dalton could have easily become a phenomenon of at least Madeline Peyroux proportions.