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In the pantheon of lost souls and forgotten voices that populate American folk music's shadowy margins, few figures cast as long or as haunting a shadow as Karen Dalton. Her 1971 debut "It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best" had already established her as something of a cult figure among New York's Greenwich Village cognoscenti, but it was 1971's "In My Own Time" that truly captured the essence of this most enigmatic of artists – a woman whose voice seemed to channel every heartbreak, every late-night whiskey confession, every moment of beautiful despair that the human condition could muster.

By the time Dalton entered the studio to record what would tragically become her final album, she was already something of a legend among those in the know. Bob Dylan had name-checked her as his favourite singer, comparing her voice to a combination of Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith – high praise indeed from the master himself. Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, and other Village luminaries had long recognised her extraordinary talent, yet commercial success remained frustratingly elusive. Perhaps it was inevitable; Dalton was never going to be an easy sell. Part Cherokee and African-American, raised in poverty in Oklahoma, she possessed a voice that was too raw, too real, too uncompromising for mainstream consumption.

"In My Own Time" finds Dalton working with a sympathetic cast of musicians including Richard Bell, Harvey Brooks, and members of what would later become The Band's extended family. The production, handled by Nick Venet, wisely keeps things sparse and intimate, allowing Dalton's extraordinary voice to remain the focal point throughout. This isn't folk music in any purist sense – it's something altogether more fluid, incorporating elements of blues, country, and what we might now recognise as Americana, though that term wouldn't be coined for another two decades.

The album opens with a devastating reading of Tim Hardin's "How Can We Hang On to a Dream," transforming what was already a melancholy meditation on lost love into something approaching spiritual desolation. Dalton's voice cracks and soars, finding emotional territories that even Hardin himself never quite reached. It sets the tone for an album that consistently finds profundity in simplicity, depth in apparent effortlessness.

"Same Old Man," the album's standout track, showcases Dalton at her most compelling. Over a gently rolling rhythm section and tasteful guitar work, she delivers a performance that's simultaneously world-weary and defiant. There's something almost conversational about her delivery, as if she's sharing secrets with an old friend rather than performing for an audience. It's this quality – this sense of intimate revelation – that makes "In My Own Time" such a compelling listen more than five decades after its release.

Equally impressive is her take on "Take Me," where Dalton's voice dances around the melody with the kind of rhythmic sophistication that betrays her deep understanding of jazz phrasing. The song builds slowly, layers of instrumentation gradually joining her voice until the whole thing achieves a kind of transcendent lift-off. It's moments like these that remind you why Dylan and others held her in such high regard.

The album's title track, meanwhile, finds Dalton at her most philosophical, contemplating the passage of time and the weight of experience with the kind of hard-won wisdom that can't be faked. There's a sense throughout the album that these aren't just songs but chapters from a life lived fully, with all the attendant joy and sorrow that implies.

Tragically, "In My Own Time" would prove prophetic in more ways than one. Dalton's struggles with addiction and her general discomfort with the music industry meant that this would be her final studio album. She retreated from public life, performing only occasionally until her death in 1993, aged just 55.

In recent years, however, Dalton's reputation has undergone a significant rehabilitation. Artists from Nick Cave to Devendra Banhart have cited her as an influence, and "In My Own Time" has been recognised as a masterpiece of American music – a document of a unique artistic voice operating at the peak of its powers. It stands as proof that the most profound art often comes from the margins, from voices too honest and too uncompromising to ever truly fit in. Karen Dalton was one such voice, and "In My Own Time" remains her definitive statement.