This editor has seen Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings perform. She and they are true, funk performers. Check them out when you get a chance. Funk lovers won't be disappointed. (newsweek) Apollo may have been the sun god, but the Harlem theater that bears his name is a temple of funk. Take the latest revival meeting: Sharon Jones is backed by her natty band--eight men strong and fully endorsing their singer's abilities ("She's a love maker; she's all right," they chant in unison. "She's outta sight!"). But no one is happier to be here than she is. "Apollo!" she shouts to her sold-out crowd. "I made it! ... Lemme take off my heels and let me dance!" Her tasseled dress shimmies as she gets-up-offa-that-thang and no fewer than three gentlemen hop up from the crowd over the course of the evening to shake it with her. Her debut on that surprisingly small stage is capped by a brow-wetting medley of the Godfather of Soul's biggest hits: "Try Me," "Papa's Got a Brand New Band," "It's a Man's Man's Man's World." But for one hot October moment at least (may James Brown's soul rest in eternally funky peace) this is a woman's world. This is Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings's world. Born, like James Brown, in Augusta, Ga., Jones's first taste of the stage came as an angel in a Sunday school performance of "Silent Night." But it was the Godfather who hooked her. Her dad took her to see Brown when she was a little girl; Jones, 51, stood in the front row, eyes level with the stage. "All I remember is saying, 'Look! He's floating," she says. She moved to Brooklyn, working with a succession of disco and funk bands. She stalled in her quest for stardom because, she says, promoters would tell her she was too stocky, didn't have the right look. "They said I was too dark," she says. She did an ill-fated stint as a Riker's Island prison guard (she pulled a muscle on the job and was injured in a car accident). By the early 1990s, when she met the boys who would ultimately comprise the Dap Kings, she was a wedding singer earning 0 a night. But she believed in the band enough to accept or 0 to gig with them instead.

Join BBN for free to post a comment. If you already have an account, please login here to post a comment. You will be returned to this page after logging in.