For singer Sharon Jones, it's been a long journey from Augusta, Ga. — the hometown she shares with James Brown — to playing stages with the likes of Mavis Staples, Tony Bennett and Solomon Burke. Along the way, she's been a gospel vocalist, a church organist, a pseudonymous disco diva and even a Corrections Officer for New York City's infamous Riker's Island jail.
Now, at 47, she's earning critical acclaim and space in the music collections of mainstream fans via an energetic and decidedly old-school flavor of soulful funk.
"When I was younger, [the music industry] didn't accept me," she remembers. "They said I was too dark-skinned, too short, too fat. And when I got a little older, into my 20s, they said I was too old.
"Well, I'm still dark and short, and I like to think of myself as pleasantly plump. And now my light is shining."
In her youth, Jones split time between home in Augusta and school in New York, and found her voice in church choirs and gospel music. As she got older, however, the singer developed a desire to reach a wider audience with her talent.
She recalls some reproach from friends, family and fellow parishioners about trying to make a living performing "the Devil's Music," but Jones herself never grappled too intensely with any moral issues surrounding her decision to work in secular sounds.
"God gave me a gift," she says. "Nowadays, there's money in the gospel thing, but back then, I just thought singing in church wasn't enough; it wasn't what God gave it to me to do it. He didn't say, 'Just do gospel.'"
While continuing to sing in church (and play organ — she still sits behind the keys at Queens, NY's Universal Church of God when she's in town), Jones spent years working as a session and backing vocalist, and even cut a few disco singles under the name Miss LaFaye.
"I did anything that came along that my voice would fit into," she says, "and my voice fit that [Weather Girl and disco/dance vocalist] Martha Wash type thing."
A breakthrough never materialized, and eventually a disheartened Jones went to work at Riker's Island. She kept singing and cultivating contacts, though, and by '96 had fallen in with a group of musicians closely associated with NYC retro-funk label Desco. Jones' voice caught the attention of the Desco house band Soul Providers when she was brought in to do backing vocals for an obscure but oddly enduring James Brown acolyte named Lee Fields. She ended up recording and releasing a handful of heavily JBs-indebted singles with the Providers; the tunes were immediately well received by an underground fanbase obsessed with the raw, kinetic rare-groove funk of the '60s and '70s, particularly in Britain and Europe, where Jones toured with the Providers and was crowned the "Queen of Funk."
Desco's vogue as a home of primal old-school funk was, unfortunately, relatively short-lived. As its novelty began to fade, several of the label's key principals — including members of the former Providers — moved over to the rising, similarly minded (though more eclectic) Brooklyn imprint Daptone Records. Jones went with them; her first full-length release was recorded with Daptone's answer to the Soul Providers, The Dap-Kings.
2002's Dap-Dippin' with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings drew from a somewhat wider palette than the Desco catalog, showcasing the Dap-Kings' facility with Afro-beat styles (members of The Dap-Kings also play in the acclaimed Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra), and Jones' ability to handle ballads as well as upbeat dance-floor soul. Last year's Naturally followed suit, delivering airtight live-in-the-studio performances by a rhythmically invincible outfit fronted by an evocative and familiar-yet-fresh voice.
"I love those guys to death," says Jones of The Dap-Kings. "I think maybe I was meant to get started at this later age … it's more mellow, there's no competition. Why would we want to compete with each other? Everybody in the band's into their own thing."
Unlike the Desco recordings, Jones and the Dap-Kings' Daptone output evinces a marked desire to be its own thing, to have its own identity. The retro hallmarks are unarguably still there, but the group no longer sounds beholden to re-creating exactly the sounds of a bygone era. Those sounds are certainly still a big part of what Jones and the Dap-Kings do; they're just no longer all Jones and the Dap-Kings do.
"When it was Desco, it was James Brown and the JBs; [the label was] inspired by that sound, and a little of the Afro-beat," says Jones. "What they wanted to create was music that kept that same groove …
"But what we're doing [now] isn't really anybody else's stuff. All our songs are originals. It's new stuff, but trying to keep that feel. We're not trying to bring it back; we just don't want to lose it."
Holding onto the good, the inspirational, the timeless elements of past influences while trying to do something new, something personal — a pretty good argument could be put forth for calling that the definition of making music in general. You take what moves you, and pick up new stuff as you go; even when making a change as substantial as crossing the border between the spiritual and the secular. And Jones brought some of singing gospel's most important lessons along with her when she started bringing the funk.
"The main thing is that energy, that stamina," she says. "In gospel, when you're singing, you sing with everything you have, like it's your last song and you want the Lord to hear it.
"And anytime I walk on that stage [now], it's like it could be my last time, and I'm going to give it everything I have."
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2006.