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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 6 March 2008

The closest you’ll get to real soul (this side of the 1960s)

PREVIEW
SHARON JONES AND THE DAP- KINGS
Jazz Cafe

THOSE obsessive soul and funk record collectors you see sifting through the rarities section don’t know whether to laugh or cry right now.
For all their grumbles about how modern soul is overproduced and manufactured more by computers than a powerful set of lungs and a brassy horn section, they can’t help but quibble when a few hopefuls try and get back to basics.
Take the case of Duffy. Top of the charts with Mercy, a pop song with funk credentials but the moan from the experts is she sounds more like Lulu than Aretha.
The purists want soul to be cool but it seems deep down they don’t want it to be top of charts, and their golden rule has always been: It’s only ever good if its right at the back of a dusty crate of seven inches.
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, booked in for three nights at the Jazz Café next month, haven’t hit the top of the pop charts and have instead developed a cult following, hoodwinking a fair few, albeit not intentionally, into thinking they have been around since the glory days of Stax and Motown.
Jones, a powerhouse of a singer whose style can be charted somewhere between gospel and disco, has been trying to convince people for a while that old recipe soul is best and those who can see beyond Joss Stone are at last beginning to take notice.
It’s not just because her band have helped out better-known acts like Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse, whose Rehab tune might not have sounded so good without them. It’s because their fiery soul revue is the closest thing to sparking up the time machine and heading back to 1960s to hear it done properly. New album 100 Days and 100 Nights should be a treat, but this stuff is always best tasted live.
RICHARD OSLEY

• Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings play the Jazz Café in Parkway, Camden Town. (Camden Town Tube) from Wednesday April 16 to Friday April 18.
Tickets: £25 in advance/ £30 on the door.

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