Karen Mulhall

Some find Karen Dalton's voice difficult to listen to, and despite the Billie Holiday comparisons, it is rougher going than Lady Day. But Dalton's vocals aren't that hard to take, and they are expressive; like Buffy Sainte-Marie, it just does take some getting used to because of their unconventional timbre. Her debut album has a muted folk-rock feel reminiscent of Fred Neil's arrangements in the mid-'60s, unsurprising since Neil's Capitol-era producer, Nick Venet, produced this disc too, and since Dalton, a friend of Neil, covered a couple of Neil songs here ("Little Bit of Rain," "Blues on the Ceiling"). Although clocking in at a mere ten songs, it covers a lot of ground, from Tim Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Leadbelly to the traditional folk song "Ribbon Bow" and the Eddie Floyd/Booker T. Jones-penned soul tune "I Love You More Than Words Can Say." The record is interesting and well done, but would have been far more significant if it had come out five years or so earlier. By 1969 such singers were expected to write much of their own material (Dalton wrote none), and to embrace rock instrumentation less tentatively.

After beginning as a vocalist for numerous house music producers, Karen Souza participated in the successful series Jazz and 80’s and its successors. Now, Karen has launched her solo career with Essentials, a summary of her career as a jazz singer, where her unique and seductive voice draws you in. This album brings us recreations of classics such as Every Breath You Take (The Police), Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? (Culture Club), Creep (Radiohead) and Tainted Love (Soft Cell), which have become classics over the past few years. Essentials is a different album, where jazz appears at its most elegant, thanks to Karen´s amazing voice.

Karen Carroll has plenty of opportunity to strut her stuff on her debut, Had My Fun. Unlike many contemporary blues albums, which are highly polished blasts of blues-rock, Had My Fun takes its time. Many of the songs are torchy slow blues or down and dirty Chicago blues – either way, they sound natural, never forced. That's appropriate, since Carroll sings like a natural, caressing the ballads and growling the nastier numbers. Best of all, there's actual grit in the production – four of the songs were recorded live – and that allows Carroll to achieve her full potential on this impressive debut.