THU., AUGUST 30, 2007
In This Feature
Magazine Archives:
A-Daption: The Daptone Way
by Lenny Kaye
Daptone Records nestles in the warm valley between the classic years of Motown/Stax and the blaxploitation bad-ass genre of soul music that followed, before R&B slid seamlessly into disco (somewhere about the time of the Hues Corporation and George McCrae). Partaking of gospel shout-out, Hammond organ jazzbo and straight one-up funk slightly to the right of Bootsy, Brooklyn’s premier soul-to-soul label has a new/old sound that seems perfectly au courant.
Traditionalism and a loose formality underlie the music’s cumulative power, like a Soul Train dancer in full strut. As hot as it gets, it doesn’t let its feathers ruffle. Phrases anticipate or lay back; drum heads stretch tight and wack deliberately; horns, whole sections of them, dot and punctuate. This is R&B ensembling the Big Bands while still remaining Small Combo, hints of Louis Jordan and Lucky Millinder finding their place within Daptone’s more “current” influences: the “Cissy Strut” Meters, the Bernard “Pretty” Purdie of “Funky Donkey,” Jerry O’s (no relation to Karen) “Karate Boogaloo,” Dyke and the Blazers’ “Funky Broadway,” Millie Jackson’s “The Morning After.” Or maybe those are just my own favorites as I locate the breakbeat on Daptone’s seguing turntable. In truth, Daptone amalgamizes many soul and funk genres, and remains faithful to them even as they increasingly widen the label’s trademark identity.
In the great yin-yang of Motown-Stax and their respective empires, Daptone hews more toward Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton’s approach, creating a clannish family and letting the musicians shape their music, rather than grooming it from above. On McLemore Ave., Booker T. and the MGs were the house band, along with the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns. Everyone contributed ideas, and the hit records that resulted not only had a continuity of sound, but were customized to the shape and feel of their featured singers, whether Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas or Carla Thomas. The licks were fingerlicking tasty, perhaps not as ruthlessly calculated as Motown’s “Hitsville,” more open to emotional candor. If Motown represents New Year’s Eve, Stax made the better Christmas album.
Daptone was begun by aficionados who quickly moved past homage and respect to create records with the verve and attack of their role models. The label’s packaging (unfortunately only to be imagined on this downloading site) celebrates the macaroni-and-cheesy graphics of the chitlin’ circuit, but that’s just window-dressing until the music counts off. What sets this label apart from other referential revivalists is that they’re not nostalgic. The music has a timeless vitality and modern pulse, virtues that recently found the Dap-Kings backing neo-soul princess Amy Winehouse on her breakthrough tour and record. To say that they breathe life into a retro style overlooks that style’s continuing appeal to dancers and DJ’s — witness Phast Phreddie’s regular Subway Soul Club, a party staple of New York’s nightlife set, or James Brown’s sampling rate.
Neal Sugarman, who partners with Gabriel Roth at Daptone’s helm, leads the Sugarman Three and plays tenor sax in the Dap-Kings, puts it as get-on-the-good-foot as can be: groove. “To play in a disciplined ensemble requires a certain degree of egolessness. We know what kind of sound we want sonically, and we lay it as long as we can.” He even characterizes the bedrock momentum as “simple and stupid,” but one listen to the intricate bass and guitar figures code-talking with horn riffs and hi-hat patterns shows that this is sophisticated stuff. Sometimes it’s harder for a musician to be part of a lockstep formation, to not stray from the clockwork task at hand, than to solo madly. “It’s dance music,” Neal says, although, I might add, it's graced with a sense of breath control and airy openness that flies in the face of drum machines and ProTools cut-paste-copy.
The Budos Band sounds cinematic, as if the band were trailing Richard Roundtree or John Travolta on the stroll.
This philosophy spills over to Daptone’s recording studio, House of Soul, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. There is an emphasis on going to analog tape and hitting it hard, remembering the words “raw” and “live,” and not allowing too many decision-making options on the back end side. Essentially what you hear is what comes off the studio floor.
The best Daptone overview in the eMusic lists is Vol. I of their 7 Inch Singles Collection. The current label is a direct descendant of Desco Records, which Gabriel founded with Phillipe Lehman in the mid '90’s, of which their “funk 45” line featured Sharon Jones, the Sugarman Three, and instrumental bands like the Daktaris and Soul Providers that would provide the personnel for Daptone’s later mix-and-match excursions, with bassist Bosco Mann leading the charge. When Roth and Lehman went their separate ways, Sugarman moved from label artist to involved exec, helping to morph Desco into Daptone. 7 Inch Singles replicates the great 45 experience, with a vocal on the A side (pt. 1) and the band stretching out on pt. 2. There is less lyrical development than catchphrasing, both Sharon and Lee Field relying on exortation and call-and-response to galvanize the dancefloor into action. Charley Bradley leads Sugarman and Co. amidst some frantic guitar work in “Take It As It Comes Pt.2;” Naomi Davis points the way to the “Promised Land,” and like the JBs, instrumental figures frolic on endless repeat and repeat and repeat until the inevitable breakdown.
Jones is Daptone’s starpower at the moment, with a new album — 100 Days, 100 Nights — ready to drop to its knees and shout please please please, capping a long gestation period that has seen her growing in assuredness and maturity. Not that she came to Daptone wet behind the ears. Singing since the '70s, when the prospects for classic funk seemed on the far side of possibility, Desco found her working as a prison guard. I was captivated after seeing her for the first time, when Andrew “8 Track” Burns took me to the Mercury Lounge for a Daptone revue. 2002’s Dap Dippin’, her debut album release, contains some of the above singles, such as “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Got a Thing on My Mind,” and also allows her to stretch out: a steamy track like “Make It Good For You” melts buttahhhhh….
The Sugarman Three takes its inspiration from classic organ-dominated jazz-funk groups, built around Adam Scone’s mighty B-3, king of all instruments, as befits the heaviest (no, you carry the Leslie). This is less the Hammond excursions of Jimmy Smith or Shirley Scott, with their emphasis on single-noting, than someone like Billy Preston, whose use of the instrument was more textural and percussive. Harking back to the black church, and especially the way the Hi label manipulated the drawbars (Al Green), Sugarman’s sound is band-driven, Neal himself leaning toward the Gene Ammons-Stanley Turrentine-Maceo Parker school of saxophonics. Soul Donkey is a good starting point to explore their métier: try a taste of “Chicken Half” or the shell game of “Turtle Walk.”
The Budos Band are the new kids on the block. Neal remembers them as Staten Island teenagers who used to sneak into Sugarman Three gigs, moving through hip-hop funk and then Meters funk on their way to discovering Fela funk. Their self-titled debut album hewed close to Nigerian modes, but II is expansive and assured, cinematic (“Chicago Falcon”), as if the Budos were trailing Richard Roundtree or John Travolta on the stroll. There is a sleek reworking of “My Girl”; “King Cobra” puts the –ous in sinu- and omin-.
With their label vibe set in family stone, Daptone is looking toward new horizons. In the works is a collection of a cappella gospel groups from Como, Mississippi, and an abiding interest in Afrobeat. They've just hired a label manager, so the Dap Kingdom can get on with making the next beat in the bar. That one don’t wait for no one.
Traditionalism and a loose formality underlie the music’s cumulative power, like a Soul Train dancer in full strut. As hot as it gets, it doesn’t let its feathers ruffle. Phrases anticipate or lay back; drum heads stretch tight and wack deliberately; horns, whole sections of them, dot and punctuate. This is R&B ensembling the Big Bands while still remaining Small Combo, hints of Louis Jordan and Lucky Millinder finding their place within Daptone’s more “current” influences: the “Cissy Strut” Meters, the Bernard “Pretty” Purdie of “Funky Donkey,” Jerry O’s (no relation to Karen) “Karate Boogaloo,” Dyke and the Blazers’ “Funky Broadway,” Millie Jackson’s “The Morning After.” Or maybe those are just my own favorites as I locate the breakbeat on Daptone’s seguing turntable. In truth, Daptone amalgamizes many soul and funk genres, and remains faithful to them even as they increasingly widen the label’s trademark identity.
In the great yin-yang of Motown-Stax and their respective empires, Daptone hews more toward Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton’s approach, creating a clannish family and letting the musicians shape their music, rather than grooming it from above. On McLemore Ave., Booker T. and the MGs were the house band, along with the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns. Everyone contributed ideas, and the hit records that resulted not only had a continuity of sound, but were customized to the shape and feel of their featured singers, whether Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Rufus Thomas or Carla Thomas. The licks were fingerlicking tasty, perhaps not as ruthlessly calculated as Motown’s “Hitsville,” more open to emotional candor. If Motown represents New Year’s Eve, Stax made the better Christmas album.
Daptone was begun by aficionados who quickly moved past homage and respect to create records with the verve and attack of their role models. The label’s packaging (unfortunately only to be imagined on this downloading site) celebrates the macaroni-and-cheesy graphics of the chitlin’ circuit, but that’s just window-dressing until the music counts off. What sets this label apart from other referential revivalists is that they’re not nostalgic. The music has a timeless vitality and modern pulse, virtues that recently found the Dap-Kings backing neo-soul princess Amy Winehouse on her breakthrough tour and record. To say that they breathe life into a retro style overlooks that style’s continuing appeal to dancers and DJ’s — witness Phast Phreddie’s regular Subway Soul Club, a party staple of New York’s nightlife set, or James Brown’s sampling rate.
Neal Sugarman, who partners with Gabriel Roth at Daptone’s helm, leads the Sugarman Three and plays tenor sax in the Dap-Kings, puts it as get-on-the-good-foot as can be: groove. “To play in a disciplined ensemble requires a certain degree of egolessness. We know what kind of sound we want sonically, and we lay it as long as we can.” He even characterizes the bedrock momentum as “simple and stupid,” but one listen to the intricate bass and guitar figures code-talking with horn riffs and hi-hat patterns shows that this is sophisticated stuff. Sometimes it’s harder for a musician to be part of a lockstep formation, to not stray from the clockwork task at hand, than to solo madly. “It’s dance music,” Neal says, although, I might add, it's graced with a sense of breath control and airy openness that flies in the face of drum machines and ProTools cut-paste-copy.
This philosophy spills over to Daptone’s recording studio, House of Soul, in Bushwick, Brooklyn. There is an emphasis on going to analog tape and hitting it hard, remembering the words “raw” and “live,” and not allowing too many decision-making options on the back end side. Essentially what you hear is what comes off the studio floor.
The best Daptone overview in the eMusic lists is Vol. I of their 7 Inch Singles Collection. The current label is a direct descendant of Desco Records, which Gabriel founded with Phillipe Lehman in the mid '90’s, of which their “funk 45” line featured Sharon Jones, the Sugarman Three, and instrumental bands like the Daktaris and Soul Providers that would provide the personnel for Daptone’s later mix-and-match excursions, with bassist Bosco Mann leading the charge. When Roth and Lehman went their separate ways, Sugarman moved from label artist to involved exec, helping to morph Desco into Daptone. 7 Inch Singles replicates the great 45 experience, with a vocal on the A side (pt. 1) and the band stretching out on pt. 2. There is less lyrical development than catchphrasing, both Sharon and Lee Field relying on exortation and call-and-response to galvanize the dancefloor into action. Charley Bradley leads Sugarman and Co. amidst some frantic guitar work in “Take It As It Comes Pt.2;” Naomi Davis points the way to the “Promised Land,” and like the JBs, instrumental figures frolic on endless repeat and repeat and repeat until the inevitable breakdown.
Jones is Daptone’s starpower at the moment, with a new album — 100 Days, 100 Nights — ready to drop to its knees and shout please please please, capping a long gestation period that has seen her growing in assuredness and maturity. Not that she came to Daptone wet behind the ears. Singing since the '70s, when the prospects for classic funk seemed on the far side of possibility, Desco found her working as a prison guard. I was captivated after seeing her for the first time, when Andrew “8 Track” Burns took me to the Mercury Lounge for a Daptone revue. 2002’s Dap Dippin’, her debut album release, contains some of the above singles, such as “What Have You Done for Me Lately” and “Got a Thing on My Mind,” and also allows her to stretch out: a steamy track like “Make It Good For You” melts buttahhhhh….
The Sugarman Three takes its inspiration from classic organ-dominated jazz-funk groups, built around Adam Scone’s mighty B-3, king of all instruments, as befits the heaviest (no, you carry the Leslie). This is less the Hammond excursions of Jimmy Smith or Shirley Scott, with their emphasis on single-noting, than someone like Billy Preston, whose use of the instrument was more textural and percussive. Harking back to the black church, and especially the way the Hi label manipulated the drawbars (Al Green), Sugarman’s sound is band-driven, Neal himself leaning toward the Gene Ammons-Stanley Turrentine-Maceo Parker school of saxophonics. Soul Donkey is a good starting point to explore their métier: try a taste of “Chicken Half” or the shell game of “Turtle Walk.”
The Budos Band are the new kids on the block. Neal remembers them as Staten Island teenagers who used to sneak into Sugarman Three gigs, moving through hip-hop funk and then Meters funk on their way to discovering Fela funk. Their self-titled debut album hewed close to Nigerian modes, but II is expansive and assured, cinematic (“Chicago Falcon”), as if the Budos were trailing Richard Roundtree or John Travolta on the stroll. There is a sleek reworking of “My Girl”; “King Cobra” puts the –ous in sinu- and omin-.
With their label vibe set in family stone, Daptone is looking toward new horizons. In the works is a collection of a cappella gospel groups from Como, Mississippi, and an abiding interest in Afrobeat. They've just hired a label manager, so the Dap Kingdom can get on with making the next beat in the bar. That one don’t wait for no one.
© 1992 - 2009 All Media Guide, LLC