Most people got their first taste of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in 2005, right around the release of their second album, Naturally. Though they’d already been together for almost a decade, they reached a whole new level of exposure that year, with the Dap Kings backing Amy Winehouse on her Back to Black album, and Jones, who performs at the Santa Cruz Blues Festival on Sunday, appearing in the Denzel Washington movie The Great Debaters.
This was also around the time that Winehouse and others popularized a revival of classic soul. While Jones, 57, gets lumped in with that movement, this isn’t retro music to her—in fact, she actually was a soul singer in the 70s, she just didn’t make it big at the time. And her work with the Dap Kings started in the mid-90s, well before there was any classic soul revival happening.
“What we’re doing isn’t retro, but people are going to call us what they want to call us. We’re not trying to imitate it. It’s my voice. It’s who I am. Retro is someone young trying to imitate someone older. I’m not trying to imitate a sound. I am that sound,” Jones says.
As hard as Jones tried in the 70s, she couldn’t get any label to back her. Even though she always had a powerful voice, what she was consistently told by labels was that she just didn’t have the right look
Even to this day, her surprising success is due in part to the fact that she still hasn’t worked with any majors. Jones and the Dap Kings have released their music exclusively on Dap-Tones Records, a label run by Gabriel Roth—the band’s bassist.
“If I had been on some major label and our album didn’t do well, they would have dropped me. There’s no dropping here. We do whatever we do. It’s all for us,” Jones says.
During the ’80s and early ’90s, Jones had to pursue work outside of the music industry. Soul music was quickly being replaced by R&B and hip-hop. So Jones found work as a corrections officer and an armored car guard for Wells Fargo.
“I thought I was never going to make it, cause of how the music was turning and because they told me I wasn’t right to be a singer. That’s why I went and took those jobs, so I can secure myself, and maybe sing at weddings on the side or do a little background vocals here and there. That’s what I had accepted,” Jones says.
In 1996, she got an opportunity to sing backing vocals on a studio session with funk musician Lee Fields, which Roth was organizing. Jones knew Roth because he was a friend of her now ex-boyfriend.
They were initially looking for three female background singers, but Jones came over after work and told them she could do all three parts herself. Which she did, still wearing her security guard outfit and with a gun strapped to her side.
They were so impressed, they recorded some tracks with her singing lead. This eventually blossomed into the Soul Providers, for which Jones was the lead singer. But that band unraveled in 2000, with Roth starting Daptones Records, as well as a new group, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.
Over the next few years, pop music seemed to finally catch up to her, even if it had to reach back to do so. She was perfect for a post-Strokes, garage band world, coming from the old school mindset of soul music where the singer’s job was to connect to the emotions of the lyrics, instead of putting a great deal of emphasis on technique.
“I’m not trying to sound a certain way. I just follow the soul of the music, and I feel it and try to sing the lyrics to that, whether it’s happy, whether it’s sad, and the story they’re telling. That’s the most important thing, what am I singing about? What does this mean?” Jones says.
Though Jones did used to write a lot of her own music in the ’70s, she rarely writes any of the music or lyrics for the Dap Kings. She feels this enables her to really bring the songs to life, because rather than trying to convey what’s in her heart, she can convey the emotions of the songs as written.
“I ain’t talking about me, but I understand the story. They are pouring their heart out, and I can feel the hurt. That may have not been me in the song, but maybe it was me years ago, or maybe somebody I know that got hurt. It’s easy for me to tell it. I guess that’s why some good singers become great actresses, that’s what being an actress is, a pretender,” Jones says.
She does sometimes see the emotions behind the lyrics differently than the writer, but she believes that gives her the freedom to make it her own.
“You are writing it, but this is the way I’m feeling it. When you bring it to me, now let me sing it my way. Let me give you that soul. Let me make it part of me,” Jones says.
Their first album was Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, released in 2002, followed by Naturally. Both these albums were heavily influenced by 70s funk. Her follow ups 100 Days, 100 Nights (2007), I Learned the Hard Way (2010), and Soul Time (2011) drew much more from the classic ’60s soul sound.
A lot of the Dap Kings early fans came from the Internet, and their wider and wider touring schedule.
“We just start being heard more,” says Jones. “I think we just stayed true to what we were doing. Not everybody has the Internet, but they want to hear my music and they won’t play it on the radio, so you got to go to the show. That’s why I enjoy doing the festivals. The festivals are good. Because some people get to hear something that they wouldn’t get a chance to hear on the radio. Because the radio’s going to play Beyonce or a Rihanna song, or whatever song is on top,” Jones says.
The past few years, Jones has gotten to play with Lou Reed, Prince, Michael Buble, David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. When she opened for Prince one time, after he heard her and the Dap Kings play “When I Come Home,” he told her that he hadn’t heard the funk like that in over twenty years.
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings have a new album, Give the People What They Want, scheduled to be released in August. They have already released a single, “Retreat”, which is an explosive, high-energy, horn-driven soul song. Jones says that the rest of the album infuses a lot of different sounds, like Latin and Afrobeat.
She realizes that some fans may not like the new songs, at least not right away. Some in fact have already commented on “Retreat,” not liking the direction it’s going, but that isn’t important to Jones. She only wants to make music that she likes, and to enjoy what she’s doing.
“Once I get unhappy, I don’t do this anymore. People do it for the money and the popularity. No. I’m sorry. I don’t need 150 million dollars. When am I going to spend that kind of money?” Jones says. “If a person is young, they get even more attention. For me it’s taken longer because of my age. I don’t want to do pop music, just because they got all these young people out here doing this stuff. I don’t want to do what they’re doing. I don’t want to sound like that. That music don’t turn me on. But I want to make music like I’m doing and these other people aren’t doing out here.”
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings play the Santa Cruz Blues Festival on Sunday May 26, at Aptos Village Park, Aptos. Tickets are $120 (Saturday and Sunday), $65 (one day only).
