The gospel of Sharon Jones

Never mind the silver-tongued idols preaching vintage R&B sounds. Only Daptone’s leading lady can save your soul

Like many practitioners of true-school soul music, Sharon Jones cut her teeth in church, singing joyful noise unto the lord — and you can tell.

It’s not just that you leave a Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings show feeling reborn. Jones’ otherworldly pipes let her shift easily from the achin’ wail of a woman done wrong, on the title track of ’07’s 100 Days, 100 Nights, to a hot, slinky hard-funk breakdown on their cover of the hallucinatory First Edition hit “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).” (Kenny Rogers may have beat the one-armed bandit, but he is no Sharon Jones, sir.)
But beyond her commanding vocal delivery, Jones has the passion and presence of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. She’s a missionary, looking to spread the good word about something she believes in with evangelical faith — the gospel of Sharon Jones.

“What Aretha and Smokey Robinson and James Brown were back in the ’60s, that’s me in the 2000s,” she crows down the line from her home base in New York. Jones has no qualms about labelling herself a living legend. “I look at Amy [Winehouse], look at Mark [Ronson]: when they wanted to make their record, they ran to the Dap-Kings. They came to our studio to record, and they came to us to get that sound. These young kids, these major labels, they can call it a revival or whatever, but we’ve been doing this for years.

“I get annoyed when I see the Grammys, and you have Mary J Blige and Beyoncé, who’ve been out there for about five minutes, singing Aretha songs,” Jones continues. “I’m at home watching and thinking, ‘Why didn’t they call me?’ I think they’re afraid of me. Even Mark, when he was up there with Amy, he didn’t mention me. But, it’s OK,” she laughs. “They’ve talked about Sharon Jones since then.

“My record,” she proclaims, “is what put Daptone on the map.”



Jones is taking a trip back to 2005, when the then-three-year-old Brooklyn label was still a cult secret shared by serious funk and soul aficionados and rare-groove DJs. That year, Daptone released Naturally, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ collection of impeccably produced original funk and R&B cuts, with a viscerally heavy cover of “This Land Is Your Land” thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t Daptone’s first record, or even their first Sharon Jones release. But the album cemented the label’s place as the pre-eminent imprint for classic new American soul and funk done right; Jones became the de facto queen of the revival, with her Dap-Kings sharing the throne.

A huge part of the appeal of the crew’s recordings has to do with Daptone boss/Dap-King bassist, original songwriter and engineer Gabriel “Bosco Mann” Roth’s zealot-like devotion to proper funk recording techniques and production styles, though Jones also takes some of the credit for steering the Daptone ship in the right direction.

“Before we became Daptone — when we were still Desco [Roth’s former label with Philip Lehman, who later founded Soul Fire and Truth & Soul] — those guys used to joke around so much. They made up goofy names for each other, like Bosco Mann, Binky Griptite and they didn’t take it seriously. They asked me what I wanted to be called and I said, ‘This may be a game for you, but I’m 45, and I’ve worked way too hard for this. I’m Sharon Jones. That’s my name.’

“We didn’t sell too much with the first album [2002’s Dap-Dippin’ With Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings], and all Gabe’s credit cards were maxed out. But I stayed with Gabe, because I knew he had the head for it. He had the business head, and he saw the talent too. Don’t they say with Jewish people, they know when they see a good thing?” Jones laughs. “But he knew to look beyond. These young men don’t always give me the respect. We really had to get lawyers and get stuff situated at first, but we’re a happy family now, with an LLC and a payroll. Like I told Gabe when we started, this is gonna be the last job I ever have, so it better last.”

It would be easy to cast the rise of Sharon Jones as a fairy tale about some hapless underdog who’d been denied every break, until she was rescued by a crew of knights in shining armour. (See the apocryphal tale of Bettye La Vette and Andy Kaulkin.) Certainly, Jones had paid her dues and was working as a prison guard on Rikers Island before a fortuitous session singing backup on a Lee Fields record brought her to Roth’s attention.

But Jones is no deep-funk damsel in distress. As she tells me, you can’t teach Sharon Jones how to sing soul, and you can’t claim responsibility for the survival and success of a woman who knows full well how to take care of herself. The singer has been smart enough to insist on sharing a percentage of publishing in all Dap-Kings tracks, whether or not she has writing credits. “Without me singing these songs, they wouldn’t be these songs,” she states matter-of-factly. “I want security! When I retire, I’d better have some money coming in.”



For years, Jones was told success evaded her because she was “too black, too fat, too short, too old.” As Jones tells it, back in the mid-’90s, David Byrne was looking for backing vocalists to accompany him on a tour across Europe. She auditioned and made the cut, but was rudely rejected when the folks in charge decided she was too old. “I was young, in my thirties,” snorts the singer, now 53.

These days, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

“Anyhow, so David Byrne calls my manager now and says he wants me to sing on this album.” Byrne wanted to recruit Jones for his latest out-there project, a concept album (in collaboration with Fatboy Slim) based on the life of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos.

“I wanted to tear a strip off him, but my manager says, ‘Just wait till after you record it.’”
Jones took part in one disheartening session with the ex–Talking Head, and Byrne called her for a do-over a year later. It took some coaxing, but when Jones finally agreed to return to the studio, she let him have it.

“I said David, you don’t remember me, but when I was in my early 30s you wanted some young girl to come to Europe and you told me I was too old,” she laughs. “He was horrified. I told him it was for the best, because he’s the type of guy I would’ve gone off on. We would’ve had strong words, and we never would’ve worked together again. It was not meant for us to meet at the time. And this time around, he told me to just be myself. I sang the part, all soulful-like. Like I said, you can’t tell me how to sing soul.”

Jones is cagey when talking about what’s next for her and the Dap-Kings. Right now they’re trying to squeeze in studio sessions between gigs on the summer-festival circuit. She won’t reveal the style of the material they’re working on, but notes that she harbours dreams of honouring her past with a full-on gospel record. (She got a brief taste when she worked on the latest Daptone release, an album by Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens.)

In the meantime, Jones has more pressing projects on the go, like making sure everyone in America — including the Queen of All Media — knows her name.

“I think my biggest moment so far happened in 2006,” she says, “when I did the movie The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington. I had so many deaths around me that year, friends and family, and then all the positiveness of that movie coming down…. God just blessed me to lift my spirit up. The best thing for me was standing next to Denzel, having him look into my face.

“And then, I saw him on Oprah and heard him say my name and heard myself singing on the soundtrack of the movie. I was just waiting for Oprah to say, ‘Who’s that woman?’” she chuckles. “Actually, that’s my next thing: I wanna be on Oprah. You gotta put that energy out there; that’s how these things happen. You know, Oprah worked for me. [The Great Debaters] was her movie, Harpo Productions. She should know who I am. Oprah, open your eyes, young lady! For her, you’ve gotta have a story, and I have one. You have a struggling woman, coming up, told you’re too black, you’re too fat, you’re too short. Imagine how that felt for me, as a teenager.”

Jones laughs long and hard. “That’s some story, I tell you!”

SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS play THE TD CANADA TRUST TORONTO JAZZ FESTIVAL with Blackburn Fri, Jun 26. Mainstage Concert Theatre, Nathan Phillips Square, 100 Queen W. $35 from Ticketmaster.