«She Always sang with her eyes closed, at least in the photos that have come down to us, in direct communion with her inner muse, the better to hear herself think, to channel the next note as it revealed itself, the outsider world held at bay by her shuttered lids. Her voice was as much horn as vocal chord, a muted trumpet or alto saxophone that slid downward toward the bluish. In the pair of records she left as mementoes, one caught on the sly, the other this more formal occasioning of “In My Own Time”, she eludes arrangement, turning over phrases and lyrical scannings until she winds up on the other side of the beat, more akin to jazz than the folk music world with which she was associated, and that gave her honor, and tried to pave her way to stardom.»
Lenny Kaye, In Her Own Time
