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Karen Dalton - Don't Make Promises

In the mid and late 1980s a more commercial, harder blues emerged that arguably crossed over a little with country music... Since the 1990s the blues as a core genre hasn’t changed massively, but then it never really did. What it has done, like so many other kinds of music, is melded and morphed with other kinds of music from around the world to create some really interesting takes on the old idea of the blues. Bands like Tinariwen for example who blend music from Mali with conventional blues to make something quite unlike either. Indeed in a kind of cyclical process, the blues has returned to many African countries and found new life there.

Ultimately the blues is a kind of universal musical language, which shouldn’t be surprising given that it’s possible to trace many forms of modern popular music back to it if you look hard enough. There’s something reassuring and familiar about its pacing, structure and chord sequences. Whether it’s a hobo playing boxcar blues on a three stringed guitar, a genius at the piano or a thundering, high powered blues band firing on all cylinders, it’s a kind of music that has shown remarkable staying power and doesn’t look likely to go away any time soon.


Karen Dalton - Don't Make Promises
  • Written by: Tim Hardin
  • First recorded in: 1966
  • Released on: 1966 album

"Karen Dalton came to the folk music scene under her own steam, as opposed to being discovered and introduced to it by people already involved in it. Unlike her friends she was unable to even capture a recording"

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Location: United States

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