If you ask the average Bob Dylan or Nick Cave fan if they’ve ever heard of a folk singer named Karen Dalton, they’ll probably answer, “No.” But Dalton sang with Mr. Dylan in his formative days at Café Wha? in the West Village (he notes her as his “favorite singer in the place” in “Chronicles Vol. 1”), and Mr. Cave lists her version of “Katie Cruel”as an influence on his song, “When I First Came to Town.”

A retiring presence who had to be coaxed into recording and performing, Dalton battled drug and alcohol addictions and homelessness before passing away in 1993. She recorded only two albums, with no original material on either. The first, “It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You the Best,” was released in 1969 on Capitol and has been reissued twice; the second, “In My Own Time,” disappeared soon after its 1971 release on Just Sunshine Records, a fledgling label started by Michael Lang, one of the organizers of the original Woodstock festival. Now the latter has been reissued by Light in the Attic, largely on the strength and enthusiasm of another of Dalton’s fans, the freak folk hero Devendra Banhart, who has often called her his favorite singer.

One listen to “Something On Your Mind,”the opening track of “In My Own Time”(which Mr. Cave says he’s listened to “a million times”), and it’s clear that Mr. Banhart has modeled his singing on Dalton’s — a chime of recognition that could be compared to hearing Howlin’ Wolf’s voice for the first time after listening to Captain Beefheart, or Charley Patton after Howlin’ Wolf, for that matter. It’s the best of the tracks on which Dalton is backed by a group of upstate New York session musicians led by the Electric Flag’s Harvey Brooks, who also produced the record.

Most of “In My Own Time” falls into the rural groove established at the time by the Band. So-so covers of well-worn soul numbers like “How Sweet It Is” and “When a Man Loves A Woman” are distinguished by Dalton’s deeply-felt vocals, which look back to Billie Holiday and forward to Chan Marshall of Cat Power.

This reissue of “In My Own Time” is the latest in a wave of re-discoveries of obscure performers and albums from this time period (Judee Sill, Vashti Bunyan, Simon Finn, Gary Higgins), a trend that has spawned several record labels dedicated solely to re-releasing “lost classics” — records that fell through the cracks due to vagaries of the music business or the artists themselves, and presumably will be appreciated by a modern audience. England’s Sunbeam label has reissued a number of unsung folk, psych, and rock records that sound tantalizing on paper but fail to impress upon listening; they’re superior to a lot of better known, commercially successful records of the time but still amount to also-rans when compared to betterknown cult items that were ignored initially but keep being rediscovered through the years (Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” Big Star’s “Radio City”).

But part of the appeal of the better “lost classics”is similar to the appeal of garage bands that were first documented on Lenny Kaye’s classic “Nuggets” compilation (coincidentally, Mr. Kaye also penned the liner notes for the new Dalton reissue).The mid-60s bands collected on “Nuggets “— like Count Five, the Barbarians, and the Leaves — were trying to sound like the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Yardbirds, and though they mostly failed, they did come up with great one-shot hits in the process. Likewise, Linda Perhacs (whose 1970 LP “Parallelograms” was reissued on Wild Places in the late 1990s and has since become a psychfolk favorite) and Juliet Lawson (whose 1972 “Boo” is now out on Sunbeam) were trying to emulate Joni Mitchell, but came up with some quirky results. Ms. Perhacs wrapped some electronic sound effects around softly hallucinatory lyrics, while Ms. Lawson favored unusual arrangements. Glowingly reviewed upon its release, the near-zero sales of “Boo”were partially blamed on EMI’s van being robbed on the way back from the pressing plant!

A Chicago label, the Numero Group, has even released an excellent compilation album, “Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies of the Canyon,” which features tracks from several self-released albums by aspiring Joni Mitchells in the early 1970s that are now nearly impossible to find. The Numero Group also endeavors to do for soul what “Nuggets” did for regional garage rock with its “Eccentric Soul” series (now up to five volumes).Less truly eccentric than slightly off-center, they’re still worth hearing for fans of R&B in the psychedelic era.

The primary difference is that many of the tracks on “Nuggets” were hits, and featured early appearances by future stars like Todd Rundgren and Ted Nugent. Conversely, “Eccentric Soul” rescues records and artists from oblivion, more in the tradition of Harry Smith’s groundbreaking mid-20th century collection of early blues and folk, “Anthology of American Folk Music.” That six-album set inspired the first folk boom of the ’60s, and it may be that its rerelease on CD in the ’90s rekindled the interest not only in the folk muse, but in searching out unknown records and performers from decades before.