June 17th Laguna Beach Live!’s Jazz Wednesdays

[Miguel]

NYT, 2007:

She’s Not Anybody’s Backup Act

There is an elephant in the room at the Brooklyn headquarters of Daptone Records — a skinny, British elephant with an enormous beehive hairdo and a knack for getting her picture in the tabloids.

“What’s-her-name,” shrugged Sharon Jones, the inexhaustibly energetic 51-year-old star talent of Daptone, an underground label so devoted to its pursuit of verisimilitude in 1960s-style soul and funk that it built a studio of vintage equipment and has released far more vinyl 45s than CDs.

The elephant in question is Amy Winehouse, this year’s breakout vocal star. She hired Ms. Jones’s longtime band, the Dap-Kings, to back her up in the studio and on tour, giving the group its first real taste of the limelight. But as Daptone prepares for the release on Tuesday of Ms. Jones’s new album, “100 Days, 100 Nights,” and Ms. Jones prepares for her highest-profile concert yet, at the Apollo Theater on Oct. 6, it has found that its association with Ms. Winehouse is a mixed blessing. For one, they say, people unaware of their years of hard musical labor might wonder if Ms. Jones is jumping on Ms. Winehouse’s bandwagon.

“They jumped on us!” Ms. Jones exclaimed in an interview at the Daptone studio and office, a converted row house in the Bushwick section that has microphones in the bathroom and reels of audio tape filling the kitchen cupboards.

“Even what’s-his-name, Ronson,” she continued, referring to the New York D.J. Mark Ronson, who produced the bulk of “Back to Black,” Ms. Winehouse’s hit album. “They came to us to get the sound they wanted behind their music. We were just sitting here minding our own business, doing our little 45s and albums, and all of a sudden they were like, ‘I want your sound.’”

Thanks to Ms. Winehouse and singers like Joss Stone, Ryan Shaw and Marc Broussard, retro soul styles are enjoying a greater presence in mainstream pop than they have had in years. The Dap-Kings are the most obsessive and skillful revivalists of the bunch, and they are clearly grateful for the exposure they have gotten from Ms. Winehouse and Mr. Ronson, who recently hired the Dap-Kings horns to back him up as the house band at the MTV Video Music Awards.

But that exposure has also put Ms. Jones, who was absent from those freelance gigs, in the odd position of competing against a younger, far more famous singer who had the good taste to use her band.

“First, I feel kind of angry about it,” she said, but then added, “Well, if it took Amy to get the Dap-Kings heard, then it’s a good thing. I say it’s great. Thank you.”

...Born in Augusta, Ga. — James Brown’s home town — Ms. Jones moved to Brooklyn with her family at a young age and sang gospel music in church. She has said that she was rejected time and again by record labels for her looks and full figure, and eventually for her age, and she worked as a prison guard at Rikers Island and sang at innumerable weddings while doing backup and session singing. She met Gabriel Roth, the Dap-Kings’ bassist and a co-founder of Daptone Records, at a recording session in 1996 and joined the Daptone family.

Years of club gigs have honed the eight-piece Dap-Kings’ technique, and in its recordings the group meticulously recreates the sound of ’60s-era James Brown and Stax Records.

...When Mr. Ronson was looking for a vintage feel for Ms. Winehouse’s album, he said, he was amazed at the group’s ability to invoke the sounds he wanted better than any sampling or studio wizardry could.

“We were using every computer trick in the book to make it sound old,” Mr. Ronson said. “But it was just so ridiculous.” He said that on the first day the Dap-Kings joined him and Ms. Winehouse in the studio, “it just sounded a million times better.”

Mr. Roth said that the Winehouse project was “something we spent a handful of afternoons knocking out real quick so we can pay some rent.”

“It was a good, honest piece of work,” he continued. “But our music is something we’ve been working on together as a family for a dozen years, and it’s a product of a lot of love and creativity.”

Daptone remains fiercely self-reliant, controlling every aspect of its catalog itself, from recording to publishing to licensing and distribution. The Daptone team members say they are more interested in making music than in seeking commercial success, and with “100 Days, 100 Nights” seem almost obstinately devoted to their sound and methods.

The album has no single intended for pop radio or remixes by Mr. Ronson; in almost every way, it could have been made in 1966. Nor does Daptone intend to make more commercial records in the future. The label’s next release, Mr. Roth said, would be an a cappella gospel album, which he said was almost certain to lose money. The goal is to simply be self-sufficient.

“We’re not comfortable,” Ms. Jones said. “We’re independent. I drive an ’88 Honda.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/arts/m....html?_r=0