Dave Simpson 

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: I Learned the Hard Way

The evident love in its making saves I Learned the Hard Way from being mere pastiche, says Dave Simpson
  
  


Sharon Jones's backing band the Dap-Kings played on Amy Winehouse's Back to Black (including Rehab), and are – in the US, at least – a byword for retro soul. Their regular vocalist isn't addled by hard drugs, nor a young blonde like Duffy, but an old-school soul shouter: what Jones lacks in fashionability she makes up for in authenticity. Indeed, no soul staple has been spared to make her fourth album with the Kings sound as if it came out in 1965. Recorded on 60s equipment, there are funky licks, handclaps, "funky drummer" beats and songs that describe the "game of love" and even "hurting so bad". It's almost comically textbook at times, but made with love. Mama Don't Like My Man is a vintage showstopper about bringing home a bad boy. In the heartbroken-sounding If You Call, he inevitably does her wrong, meaning she sits by the phone, waiting for him to call, not knowing whether she is "dead or living". She should have listened to her Mama.

 

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