PHOTO: JACOB BLICKENSTAFF | It’s a season for miracles, they say. And proof can be found in the astounding holiday performance of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings Tuesday at D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre. Not only did the tight-as-a-drum soul throwbacks deliver the best of the one go-to album of the season, injecting new life into tired perennials, the show itself is a boundless triumph over adversity; a barn-burning self-healing service of deliverance.
The near-perfect soul revue would have worked on its own merits—vibrant arrangements of holiday tunes you’d given up on after hundreds of recordings amid smart original tunes for the season, along with Jones’ own reliable showstoppers.
But there was the spirit of Jones herself, whose story trumps any. A James Brown fan who was born in South Carolina and raised in Brooklyn, she worked at Rikers as a correctional officer before she was discovered as a singer who brought soul and grit from another era to the fore.
As her star rose with a band and label that seemingly formed around her singular talent, she faced adversity: a stage two pancreatic cancer prognosis in 2013 that led to surgery and chemo treatment—not the release of her latest album and a tour.
Her performances during that period were still so dynamic they inspired a documentary, Miss Sharon Jones! by Barbara Kopple. But when it debuted this fall in Toronto, Jones, who had been in remission, announced that the cancer had returned.
So, impossible as it seems, Jones has undergone what she calls “the chemo” one more time, as recently as last week, a small break in a modest tour for what is undoubtedly this year’s most praised holiday album.
After playing Conan O’Brien in Los Angeles Monday and the Lincoln Theater in D.C. Tuesday (and appearing in a Michael Buble network Christmas special), she’s off again until New Year’s in Chicago.
That means most people are deprived of hearing these terrific new arrangements and performances live during this holiday season, and what made the D.C. show so special. It was also apparent that she was still new to a lot of the material she hadn’t performed that often. That meant she had to look off to the giant letters from a music stand songbook (“I didn’t bring my glasses”) a few times. But it also brought a freshness to the performances.
She seemed to really like singing “Please Come Home for Christmas,” because the old blues is something her mother played over and over during the holidays. She shined the ringers on “Silver Bells”; if you thought Otis Redding brought the most soulful “White Christmas” possible, she put that notion to the test.
As tightly controlled as the nine-piece Dap-Kings seem to be under bassist and primary songwriter Bosco Mann, the feisty Jones could take the lead whenever she wanted, calming the band so she could insert some spoken word commentary, or completely changing songs midway, as she did in the encore when she shifted from the planned “Retreat” to the Christmas song she wrote a couple of seasons ago, “Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects.”
She doffed her heels at one point before the litany of dances that follow “People Don’t Get What They Deserve” and showed how chemo had discolored her feet. Nevertheless in flats she still unleashed a series of fast stepping moves that showed that medication hadn’t slowed the dynamo she becomes on stage.
Yet she never asked for pity or even prayers for her condition. Instead, the only other time she mentioned it, was in defiance, retooling her “Get Up, Get Out” as a message for her unwelcome, recurring disease.
That’d be a Christmas miracle to hope for; and that she’d get a full tour fitting for “It’s a Holiday Soul Party” next year.
Jones began as a backup singer for Lee Fields who has also done some notable backup singing for Amy Winehouse, Lou Reed, and David Byrne. The backup singers for the Dap-Kings, formerly known as the Dap-Ettes, now step forward with their own debut album this year and now their own opening showcase for the headliner, as Saun & Starr.
Saundra Williams and Starr Duncan Lowe met during an Apollo open mic night 30 years ago, and blend well on stage as a duo and as individual soloists—all thanks of course to the underlying support and canny arrangements of the Dap-Kings.
Following their well-received opening set, they stepped back to their backup perch to help provide the huge backing, 11-people strong, behind Jones.
