3. Karen Dalton‘Cotton Eyed Joe’
I guess I’m putting this in here in an attempt to correct the [Rednex version] of this song for everyone. This song came into sharp focus for me during that trip to Wisconsin to see Justin Justin’s Eau Claire festival. I was living in L.A. at the time, and I did a road trip there with one of my best friends. I remember we made a nine-day trip of it and stayed overnight in lots of different places like Utah and Colorado along the way. We spent several nights super high up in the mountains, and and then deep in the desert in other places. It was mostly a trip surrounded by nature apart from Vegas, which was hell on earth. I don’t drive but my friend loved driving so I did a lot of the in-car DJ-ing in return: it was the perfect road trip match.
Driving through the American wilderness with a song that comes from there felt very special. I can feel and see the whole landscape in that song. I did do some reading about this song years ago and its origin is unknown. Karen Dalton didn’t write it: it’s much older than when she recorded it. It’s an incredibly sad song about a woman who fell in love with a farm hand who turned up one day without really anyone knowing where he came from. They fell in love and then off he went again one day. It’s just so romantic and so poignant. I can hear the pain, the longing but also the joy that was felt in the first place.
It’s a story that’s inherently so evocative and of a time and place we haven’t experienced, those deep American early years: a rough, brutal place that also has some magic and is all about the land. The way she sings has this real sadness. Dalton is of Native American heritage and you can hear in the song the combination of the two cultures and one overtaking the other. Maybe I’m hearing things in it that aren’t there, but that’s what I get when I listen, and then there’s just the simplicity of a love song to someone who, in the days before any of the technology we have now, would absolutely not see that person again! There’s nothing she could do to get in touch with Cotton Eyed Joe!
I think she recorded the song in the 1960s and it would’ve been done in one take. It would’ve been recorded into a big valve mic of some kind and then straight onto vinyl. This song recorded into Pro Tools now with a perfect mic just wouldn’t be the same listening experience. We’re privileged to be able to hear this sort of thing and how it’s been preserved – and that it’s even on Spotify. You’re really hearing the past when you listen to this: it adds this whole other layer that’s the same as watching a classic black-and-white movie.
