Remembering Kate Wolf

Some performers wow you with their dynamism and/or their larger-than-life personalities. This month, though, let’s honor a gentle departed soul who knocked you over with a feathery approach: Kate Wolf.

Kate Wolf was born in San Francisco in 1942, and passed away in December of 1986, after a bitter bout with leukemia. She was just 44. Wolf was seldom dramatic, her voice was rock steady, and her musicianship framed songs rather than seeking to be a separate canvas. In fact, Wolf was a lot like northern California, where she spent most of her life--she was open, laid back, and unhurried. At first listening, it was easy enough to let Kate Wolf disappear into the expanse. Her voice was warm and comfortable, but much in the same way that an old sweater feels. Then one day you heard one of her records in the background and you suddenly couldn’t get her voice out of your head. You listened harder and that voice became the breeze that swept across the Great Divide on its way to the Pacific, the hawk riding the air currents like a sky-bound Zen surfer, and the twilight as the sun was setting. As a lifelong Easterner who has only sojourned in California, I think it was Kate Wolf who first made me understand how Westerners cope with the scale of the land. Everything out there is big--the mountains, the waves, the waterfalls, the fauna, the winter snowfall-everything that is, except humankind. You can’t compete with it, you can’t conquer it, you can’t sing over it, and Kate Wolf had the wisdom not to try.

Wolf made seven albums in her brief lifetime, and five more were issued posthumously. A personal favorite is Give Yourself to Love (1986), which is also the name of one of most-beloved songs. She was taken too soon, but the list of those who have covered her songs and/or have drawn inspiration from her is a testimony of the impact she made. It includes Emmylou Harris, Kathy Mattea, Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams, Dave Alvin, and Nanci Griffith. If you’re listening to Kate Wolf for the first time, don’t rush things. Let her songs envelop you like--well, that old sweater you drag out when the nights are cool, you’re feeling a little melancholy, and you just need something familiar and warm.

Listen to Kate sing "Red Tailed Hawk." (Nina Gerber on harmonica) and again on the achingly beautiful "Sweet Love."

Nanci Griffith's superb cover of Kate's "Across the Great Divide."