Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

A true melting pot of a band, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings were cross-generational, interracial and bicoastal. While Sharon Jones' vocal power and personality were the obvious hooks, the band put a seasoned soul diva together with young R&B disciples, and everyone came out ahead. The roots of the Dap-Kings went back to the mid-'90s, when bassist Gabriel Roth (known professionally as Bosco Mann) joined fellow soul enthusiast Philip Lehman to form a band, the Soul Providers and a label, Deseo. Emulating the classic '60s soul and funk labels Deseo developed a stable of artists including retro-funkateers Sugarmen 3. One fateful session happened when the Soul Providers had singer Lee Fields front them for a couple of tracks; the backup singer was a little-known Augusta, GA native (and Rikers Island prison guard) named Sharon Jones. Roth was impressed enough to keep Jones' name in mind after the Soul Providers split up and Lehman left the picture. He started a new partnership with Sugarmen 3 saxman Neil Sugarman, christening their label Daptone and their band the Dap-Kings (both partly an homage to a buried-treasure funk 45, Ernie & the Top Notes' "Dap Walk"). Recruiting Jones as frontwoman, they inaugurated the band and the label with 2002's Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. It was also the first full album for 45-year-old Jones, who had tried and failed to launch a career in the '80s and '90s when vintage soul was out of style. The album became a critical hit, but it was their impassioned live shows, which often stretched to three hours, that made Jones an unlikely star-and a heartening story for soul believers. By now the band had grown to a ten-piece, styled after the classic soul-revue groups. Further albums, including 2010's I Learned the Hard Way and 2014's Give the People What They Want put Jones and the Dap-Kings at the forefront of a soul revival; with most of the material being band originals by Roth and Sugarman. Both also had success outside the group: Jones appeared onstage with Lou Reed and Phish, while the Dap-Kings recorded and toured with Amy Winehouse on the landmark Back to Black. Daptone also developed a stable of artists including the Afrobeat band Antibalas and fellow soul vets Charles Bradley and Lee Fields. Jones was a widely-admired figure by 2013, when she announced that she was being treated for cancer (stage II pancreatic). She continued performing between treatments, at one point touring after losing her hair in chemotherapy. 2015 brought a documentary film, Barbara Kopple's "Miss Sharon Jones!," which dealt with her illness along with the inspiring aspects of her story-and a Christmas album, It's a Holiday Soul Party. Her later performances were a healing experience for herself and her fans, and she expressed intentions of recording a gospel album. Yet her health problems intensified in 2016; she suffered a stroke while watching the Presidential election returns on November 8-in one of her last interviews, she jokingly blamed it on the election results-and died on the 18th.