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Karen Dalton - Lonesome Valley

Oliver himself had come up in traditional brass bands but then leaned toward the new hot music, beginning with his matriculation into the gutbucket Eagle Band, probably around 1908. Later, after playing the district with his Magnolia Band, he joined the top line Onward Brass Band under the Creole Manuel Perez. One observer wrote that when the Onward played a march, dirge, or hymn it was played to perfection, no blunders. Yet even in that rarefied company, Oliver began playing monkeyshines, improvised figures around the score. He straddled the Uptown/Downtown fence.

There were likely a couple reasons. First, like any Crescent City musician, he needed to cover all styles and repertoires, especially to follow new trends and suit an international audience. Second, more than anything, he wanted to be a band man. He needed camaraderie.

The musicians he knew from New Orleans were plagued by feelings of inferiority so crippling that they could not succeed professionally. For Oliver, the police raid amounted to one more loss in a world loaded with them. One more reason to go down in the mouth, to give up hope. Or to move north, like so many others.


Karen Dalton - Lonesome Valley
  • Released on: April 23, 2022
  • Arranged by: Karen Dalton
  • Recorded at: The Attic, Boulder

"In the early ‘60s, Karen Dalton became a fixture in the Greenwich Village folk scene, interpreting traditional material, blues standards, and the songs of her contemporaries."

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