Powerful handlers could not manufacture success without market fit

Evidence

Dalton was a hybrid and, in some ways, the anti-Dylan. Five years older, twice divorced with two kids, a few missing teeth, and a nascent drug habit, she was an “authentic” Okie of Cherokee descent. Accompanying herself on various fretted instruments, Dalton had a haunting, mournful voice and great aesthetic integrity, not to mention bad luck and negative career sense, despite promotion by handlers as powerful as Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, Café au Go Go owner Howard Solomon, and Woodstock Festival organizer Michael Lang. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1882

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the book’s two-part thesis (Subcultures to Countercultures): Dalton shows the pre-1966 folk scene had top-tier promotion machinery yet still failed, complicating the claim that infrastructure alone explains success.
• CANDY: The anti-Dylan with great handlers and terrible career sense is a fun anecdote for conversation.