Throughout the course of this site’s almost eight year history, I’ve spilled a lot of virtual ink writing about a great deal of the artists on Daptone Records, including JOVM mainstays Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and Charles Bradley. Now, as you may recall, we lost Sharon last year after her three-year battle with pancreatic cancer and earlier this year, we lost Charles after his two-year battle with stomach cancer. Naturally they’ve been sorely missed by everyone who’s known them or worked with them in any capacity, as well as to their legions of fans across the world, who they brought joy, wisdom, hope and love to every single night.
Interestingly enough, Jones and her Dap Kings managed to spent the better part of her last few months writing and recording what turned out to be the band’s final, full-length studio album together, Soul of a Woman last month, almost a year to the date of her death. Recorded on eight-track tape at Daptone Records’ famed, Bushwick, Brooklyn-based House of Soul Studios, and the album finds the band and their beloved frontwoman pushing the limits of their songwriting while being among the most direct, honest and sophisticated material they’ve written together. In fact, Soul of a Woman‘s first single “Matter of Time,” was a lush and moody meditation on the nature of time that brought to mind Ecclesiastes and The Byrds’ legendary cover of Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn,” while the album’s second single, the Jones’ penned “Call on God” focused on how faith can sustain you and guide you in the most desperate and uneasy times of your life while featuring some of her dearest and oldest friends adding backing vocals to the song — just how Sharon would have wanted it.
“Sail On!,” Soul of a Woman‘s third and latest single, features the Dap Kings horn section, arguably one of the world’s best horn sections, blowing the doors down while a confident and brassy Sharon signs about a tale about the dangers of revenge — in terms of the song, it suggests that it winds up backfiring. So the song’s narrator suggests actually forgiving and even helping an old friend, who did her dirty; but underneath that theme of forgiveness is a very human and very honest bit of schadenfreude in which the song’s narrator kind of says “You’re coming back to me now? Serves your dumbass right,” before rolling her sleeves up to do the dirty work.
The recently released video was filmed at House of Soul during the recording sessions for the album and the song, capturing the band and Sharon at some of their most intimate moments.
Recently, the members of the Dap Kings were on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they performed a medley of album singles “Sail On!” and “Searching for a New Day” to pay a profoundly moving tribute to their beloved leader, and to celebrate the official release of their final album together.
