Carolyn Hester

Although Carolyn Hester's talent was tenuous, she was an important, if marginal, figure of the early '60s folk revival, singing traditional material with a high voice in the manner of Joan Baez and Judy Collins (though with less command). She is also remembered for brief musical associations with Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, and Richard Farina, as well as having her early albums produced by music legends Norman Petty (who had produced Holly), Tom Clancy, John Hammond, and John Simon. Some of her early and mid-1960s work points, if only ever so slightly, in directions that would lead to folk-rock. Hester herself was unable to make it as a folk-rocker despite a brief try, and unpredictably went into psychedelic music for a couple of albums before largely drifting out of the business in the 1970s and 1980s. In the '80s, she was a mentor for budding talent Nanci Griffith (whose vocals have been compared to Hester's), and appeared on Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms album.



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