Karen Alexander (singer)

Career

In 1965, she married Esfandiar Bahrampour, an Iranian architect, and moved to Tehran. While living there, she traveled back to the U.S. occasionally; on one trip she bought a guitar and began writing songs. She started singing in clubs, and despite it not being customary for women to sing in Iran, she continued writing songs there and sent tapes to America. She obtained a record contract in the early seventies.

Before recording her first album, she appeared as a backing vocalist on albums by Maria Muldaur and Wendy Waldman. Her debut album, Isn't It Always Love (1975), featured all original songs except the title track, written by Karla Bonoff; the songs had an up-tempo rhythm and entertaining lyrics. Three years later she released her second and final album, Voyager, which had a more melancholic atmosphere with slower tempos. In Tehran she worked at CBS Records, but the office closed during the Iranian Revolution, and she lost her job.

Although many foreigners were leaving, she and her husband stayed until the situation became too dangerous, and they fled in 1979. They moved first to Portland, Oregon, and later to Palo Alto, California.