Date: 2002
Release: Daptone #1
Cover Art: view / download
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Summertime is almost fully upon us, and it’s time to find some loud, sweaty music for all the barbecues and beach days the season brings. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Miss Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings!

Ok, so I arrived late to the Dap Dippin’ party. Released in 2002, I didn’t check out Sharon Jones until she was recommended to us by a hip couple on vacation in Palm Springs this past Christmas. Always skeptical of music recommendations from strangers (no matter how hip), I casually previewed Jones on iTunes for all of two minutes before I succumbed and bought the whole damn thing on Amazon. Maybe it was James Brown’s passing, but Jones and her Kings filled a void. With a voice somewhere between Bettye LaVette and Ann Peebles, and the brassy funk-soul rhythms of the four Dap-Kings (now famous for backing Amy Winehouse), Jones channels the past in her songs of love, loss, and righteous soul power on an album that could be a lost volume of Funky People.

“Got a Thing on My Mind” busts out of the gate, the singer and the band showing their furious funk chops. Later on, the mid-tempo “Make it Good to Me” is another standout track in which Jones implores her lover to own up and make up: “It’s half past making up time and a quarter to affection.” Despite the album’s obvious debts to its ’60s and ’70s predecessors, the music never feels stale or redundant. Jones’ and the Kings’ celebratory reinterpretation of familiar sounds is a warm reminder of why certain music never loses its edge. Jones worked as a corrections officer at Rykers Island when times got tough, and her commitment to waiting to sing until she could make the kind of old-school music she wanted infuses her passionate interpretation of every track. Better late than never.