The other day I picked up a new CD. Or at least at the record store it was in the “new” section but apparently it came out in the fall of 07 so “new” is pretty relative. Usually I like to use the term “album” or “record” but in this case the work is supposedly also available as a real vinyl album so that’s why I’m making such a point of it being a CD.
So what was it? 100 Days, 100 Nights by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. And it’s good. I think that the story of the group, their indie label, and their production methods might be more interesting but let’s start with why I picked up the album. Other than the fact that I like good old African American soul music, I happened to hear that the Dap-Kings did the music on Amy Winehouse’s album “Back To Black” and got curious. As it turns out saying “they did the music” is at least somewhat of an exaggeration, they did the best of it, but having heard that I was curious. And I was not disappointed. At least not much.
The thing is, the music is great, and pound for pound Sharon Jones is probably a better singer than Amy Winehouse. But to me the songs don’t stand out much within the genre (which in Winehouse’s case I’d say the opposite). To be fair, you could say I put in Sharon Jones and expected to hear Amy Winehouse and that wasn’t fair, the two acts have different types of music (winehouse being slightly more jazz vocals compared to Jones’ soul/funk) and different styles. Also, the group isn’t trying to create a new style of music, or reinvent anything (as far as I know), but instead they are intentionally being retro. So I think that they’re doing what they’re trying to do and it’s pretty good. And besides, how many of you damn kids reading this have even heard that much soul music anyway? Ah but Jones and the Dap-Kings have so perhaps that’s worth a demerit anyway.
Anyway the album is great so go get it, don’t let this kind of music die out etc. etc. As a special bonus let me share my thoughts on why Soul music has somewhat died out, at least as a commercial genre. The first is obvious: “people don’t have no soul no more”(sic). The second is less obvious: the music can be a bit over the top. The third is again obvious: it’s less commercial in the first place, for all kinds of reasons that you can think about yourselves. Other than that, somewhere along the lines real, good, singers that might have been soul at one time went into “R&B”. The types to be funkier soul acts (the line between funk and soul is thin to me), who probably couldn’t sing that well ended out gravitating more towards hip-hop and rap. Probably. In other words people had more options and decided to take them. Maybe. OK I just threw these thoughts out there and maybe should have left them somewhere else instead. Get the album.
