Dorothy Carter
A New York-born player of the hammered dulcimer, psaltery and hurdy-gurdy who made two self-released albums in 1976 and 1978, co-founded Mediæval Bæbes, and was reissued decades later as a pioneer of psychedelic folk.
The instruments
Dorothy Carter was born in New York City in 1935 and grew up around New England. She studied classical piano from the age of six, and sources variously place her at Bard College, the Royal Academy in London and the Guildhall School of Music. Her instruments were the hammered dulcimer, which she preferred, the psaltery, which the Quietus says she found in a music repair shop in the 1960s, the zither, hurdy-gurdy, Irish harp, flute, piano and recorder, and her voice. Uncut described her music as a mesmerizing tapestry of medievalism, folk, songwriting and proto-new age ambient.
In the early 1970s she joined Robert Rutman's Central Maine Power Music Company, a group of improvisers with self-made and found instruments and live video feedback, which played planetariums and the Museum of Modern Art, and lived in a Maine commune. She busked in Washington Square Park in New York, where she crossed paths with Laraaji, who says she greatly influenced his early exploration of the zither, and played folk festivals in the mid-1970s; "Song of the Hemp" appeared on the 1975 compilation Woodstock Moods and Moments.
Two records
Troubadour (1976), made on her own Celeste label, gathers Appalachian folk, hymns, psalms and Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies with some originals; it was reissued by Drag City on August 30, 2024, with notes by Eric Demby, and Uncut's Rob Young gave it 9 out of 10 while Aquarium Drunkard called it gnostic hymns, ancient airs and cosmic carols. Waillee Waillee (1978), also on Celeste, was produced by Carter and Steve Baer; Palto Flats reissued it on December 1, 2023, remastered by Jeff Lipton from tapes found in Rutman's Berlin studio after his death in 2019, and the Quietus made it its Reissue of the Week.
She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and kept working with Rutman. In the mid-1990s she lived in Berlin for about ten years, where the artist Danielle de Picciotto met her in the bar Ex n Pop, and in 1996 she co-founded Mediæval Bæbes with Katharine Blake, appearing on Salva Nos (1997, number two on the UK classical chart) and Worldes Blysse (1998). In 2000 she played hurdy-gurdy at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. She later moved to New Orleans, hosting salons in a warehouse studio, and died there on June 7, 2003. Klof Mag reads her influence into New Weird America, naming Joanna Newsom.
Albums
- Waillee Waillee 1978 · Celeste
Her second album, a 1978 private pressing of eight pieces for dulcimer, psaltery, voice and a few friends.
Songs
- Waillee, Waillee Waillee Waillee · 1978
The title track: her full-band arrangement of the Scottish folk song "Waly Waly".
Sources
- Dorothy Carter, Wikipedia
- Dorothy Carter, Troubadour, Uncut (2024)
- Danielle de Picciotto on Dorothy Carter, Kaput
- A Troubadour Arrives, Drag City (2024-06-13)