"Pure Soul Excitement"
This is a reposting from several years ago, hence the myspace references. Since then I have seen her in concert at the Bowery Ballroom, with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens opening—they were both pure dynamiteI promised you art last week, a big promise to make, and delivered three out of five days. So I have two to make up, and I will. But I had to take a break to talk about a soul sister.
I first heard of Sharon Jones when I was listening to my eagerly-awaited Oxford American’s annual music cd, which comes with their annual Southern music issue. The song on the cd was "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" and it was far and away the best cut on the cd. This was in 2006. I can’t remember why the editor-in-chief Marc Smirnoff and his colleagues included her, except that she was born in Augusta, Georgia, which technically make her a southerner. She moved to New York City, I’m presuming with her family, at an early age, so that makes her a New Yorker. At any rate, she tried to make the music scene in the Seventies, when she was a young woman. They told her she was too dark and too fat, then she was told she was too old in the 1980s. After that she became a corrections officer (my dad was a CO, so I know what that job is like. Not easy). The band she hooked up with quite some time ago, the Dap-Kings, crowned Sharon Jones its queen, and all I’m saying is one of their latest, 100 Days, 100 Nights (which my friend Eleanor brought to my attention ), blows everything neo-soul right out of the water. You can listen to it and download it for free on their myspace page. The group also has a website
MTV got the word, and usually when that happens, it’s the kiss of death for anything new and creative, or as in the case of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, "undiscovered." But in this instance,I’m glad MTV is recognizing where Amy Winehouse’s amazing backup band comes from. You can watch a segment on that here .
As for this soul royalty's label: They record on Dap Tone Records, which features several other acts (the label calls them all "Pure Soul Excitement") whom I plan to explore in the next few weeks. In the label's own words:
“Musician-owned and run, our [Bushwick] Brooklyn-based family of soul-drenched talent channels the spirits of bygone powerhouses like Stax and Motown into gilded moments of movement and joy, be they delivered by the likes of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Lee Fields, Charles Bradley, Binky Griptite, the Budos Band, Naomi Davis or the Sugarman 3. Whether your preference is for discs 7-inches or 12, LPs or CDs, this is music to be savored and felt, again and again.
MTV visted their honest to goodness, no digital, old school studio and you can watch that here.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings will be playing with Charles Bradley, Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens, and several other Daptone acts at the Apollo Theater from December 4–6.
Photos: Top image, by Mahalie. Printed by permission of license cc-by-sa-2.0. Center image, by nomo/michael hoefner. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
