Back to Karen Jones with an album I promised to get: People I Promised to Mention

Apologies for the delay in new posts, but I surprisingly had to work a little harder the last few weeks. I count myself lucky in that respect when I hear of all the people out there suffering from unemployment and job losses and my heart goes out to them, especially those who have the added stress of having to support a full family.  I'm going to finally get to that backlog of requested new vinyl rips that I mentioned earlier were held up in the corona-post, and there are quite a few of them.

Here's an album I was really excited to see when it arrived, having enjoyed the other Karen Jones one so much, which was recommended to us by a commenter long ago.  It was sweet and maybe not the best folk offering / discovery on these pages (cf. Paula Moore, Karen Lafferty) but really sincere and professionally well played and sung.  This one is from 1971 and came before the other one, which was simply called Karen.

It's a little bit more basic in the folk direction, less produced, lacking any orchestral colour and arrangement, just as you'd expect from the early year, showing an influence from Canadian megastar Gordon Lightfoot (and she does a cover of his rather underwhelming Minstrel of the Dawn).  Everything is played and sung very professionally and perfectly.  There are a couple other cover songs including the excruciating for me Mr. Bojangles and the pricelessly stupid: "His dog up and died, his dog up and died".

A few cute notes on the back again:

Some thoughts about me from a special friend.... Sharon

We often walk together
Arm on shoulder-- the most
happy sort of strolling I have
ever experienced.  A closeness
not found in everyday chatter
and not desired from persons just met.

Karen's music is soft and warm.
Her songs are delicate and have
the simplicity of children's nursery rhymes.
Yet my friend is not a child.
Beneath the coverlet of simple phrases
lies a whispering maturity. 
Listen!

Heartbreaking in its simple sixties-recalling naivete and sweetness.  It's almost like human beings were different back then, an altogether different species.  Imagine, there was no pressure on her to post millions of pictures of herself in a thong bikini in a full length mirror, in an exotic locale, with tons of makeup on and fake boobs.  Incredible.  It's interesting to think of the age-date of names, I recall having a crush on a girl called Sharon when I was a child, of course, today if you met anyone by that name you'd know she's middle-aged plus, like the Jennifers and Karens of the past.  In the same way today a young boy will remember with fondness his crushes called Madeline, Emma, Olivia, etc.

The album is much too short though.  Of course in the old days even the Beatles had short LPs.
The lovely song called Eyes Full of Sorrow reminds me a lot of early, the earliest Joni Mitchell, another Canadian megastar (who I dearly love actually, and have mentioned before on this blog numerous times) with the high vocals and the use of high capo on the guitar: