Review: Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings 100 Days, 100 Nights

From note one of 100 Days, 100 Nights you know exactly what Sharon Jones is all about. This isn’t one of those records that requires some time to digest, and it certainly isn’t a concept album. No, this is an album about one thing and one thing only: Soul. This also isn’t about some kind of late 60s R&B revivalist movement. Jones and The Dap-Kings make their music as though Memphis Soul never went out of style in the first place. More accurately, this album literally sounds like it was made in 1969 at the Stax studios.

The songs themselves serve as such perfect examples of how to write Soul music, you’d almost believe Sharon Jones wrote the book on the subject. Every aspect of the genre is covered here. Songs like “Keep On Looking” and the title track have that fast shuffle-like groove that makes even the stiffest of people want to get up and dance. “Be Easy” on the other hand sits in a steadier groove that cruises rather than drives. The Dap-Kings are certainly in no hurry to get anywhere. “Humble Me” slows it down even further to give a bluesy performance that gives Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” a good run for its money. The real prize of this record comes at the end of the album, however with “Answer Me,” an epic Gospel number that features Jones on the piano.

Honestly the greatest thing I can say about this album is that had I heard more of it last year, it would’ve made my top 25 in place of Amy Winehouse. Winehouse's music may be steeped in Soul history, but Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings actually make it.

A Quick Update, Then Sharon Jones At The Cannery Ballroom

It’s been far too long since I last posted anything. I know I said I would get better about this, and I promise I will, starting now.

In a short update about myself, I got that job with the used bookstore. So far things are going rather spectacularly, and as long as I can contain myself and not spend my entire paycheck there (employees get incredible discounts), it should prove to be fairly lucrative for now.

In other news I saw Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings at the Cannery Ballroom two nights ago and for my first show of the year, I have to say they set the bar pretty damn high. For someone who is almost 50, Jones knows how to work a stage and an audience like James Brown in the early 60s. This seems to come as little surprise when you find out that like the Godfather of Soul, Sharon Jones is a native of Augusta, Georgia. Maybe it’s something in the water.

Just watching her move during “My Man Is a Mean Man” was enough to make me feel like I’d just run four miles. If you can picture a 33-year-old Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary” you’ll have some idea of what I’m talking about. Jones’s dancing was equally matched by her voice, bending some notes to their breaking point while belting others with that wonderful effortlessness and aching crack of someone like Etta James. Basically what I’m saying is that Sharon Jones is absolutely everything one could ever ask for in a Soul singer.

The Dap-Kings also proved to be not only a solid accompaniment to Jones, but a perfectly solid act on their own accord, performing a few of their own songs to warm up the audience before introducing the star of the evening. Once Jones took the stage the Dap-Kings went into overdrive, churning through song after song without stopping. Part of the reason they called James Brown the hardest working man in show business was because his band worked as hard if not harder than he did. The Dap-Kings definitely understand this. Of course Brown infamously fined his band members for any mistake in a performance. The Dap-Kings just seem to play that tight because they can, and Jones knows it.

Aside from Jones turning the entire audience into her own backup singers on “Be Easy,” other highlights of the show included stellar performances of “Nobody’s Baby,” “How Do I Let a Good Man Down?,” “Tell Me,” “Let Them Knock,” “Your Thing Is a Drag,” and an encore performance of the Godfather’s own “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” turning the song on its head the way Aretha Franklin did with Otis Redding’s “Respect.”

If there was ever a candidate for the birth of a Soul revival, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are absolutely it.

Having said all that, I’m reminded that I’ve been planning to do some brief reviews of a small selection of albums released last year that didn’t make my top 25 purely because I hadn’t heard them until now. I’m gonna try to knock those out this week so expect to see some pretty regular updating, finally. That’s all for now.