Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Soulful Covers, Volume 1: 1998-2009

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings were a fantastic retro-soul band, until Jones died of cancer in 2016. They made a point of flling their albums with original songs. But earlier this month, they released the album "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In)" that consisted entirely of covers, performed back when Jones was still alive. 

This gave me the idea to compile all the other cover songs they did. It turns out there were a lot. In fact, I found enough for three albums. Here's the first one. In my opinion, Jones was a great singer, and the Dap-Kings were a very fine backing band for her, and I love their retro soul sound. But if they had one weakness, it was in the strength of their original material, which was hit and miss. So, in my opinion, they really excel doing these covers of the songs they love.

Most of the songs here have been officially released. The exceptions are "Sweet Jane" plus the last three songs. As an aside, I'm amused by the "Sweet Jane" cover, which is a "duet" between Jones and Lou Reed, who wrote the song when he was part of the Velvet Underground. It started out with Reed singing it, as he usually did, but then Jones totally took over and left Reed far behind, relegating him to singing some backing vocals near the end of the song. Not exactly a typical duet!

Anyway, the sound quality of the four unreleased songs are excellent, so the whole thing sounds very good. I put the song in rough chronological order by year, with the exception of "Amazing Grace," which fit better as the last song. Note that version is rather short, less than a minute long, but I figure it's better than not having any of the song at all.

01 I Got the Feeling (Sharon Jones)
02 Got to Be a Love (Greyboy with Quantic & Sharon Jones)
03 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed & Sharon Jones)
04 Wild about That Thing (Sharon Jones with Alvin Youngblood Hart & Teenie Hodges)
05 It's Tight like That (Sharon Jones with Alvin Youngblood Hart & Teenie Hodges)
06 We Shall Not Be Moved (Sharon Jones With Billy Rivers & the Angelic Voices of Faith)
07 That's What My Baby Likes (Sharon Jones with Alvin Youngblood Hart & Teenie Hodges)
08 The Way We Lived (Wax Tailor with Sharon Jones)
09 Baby [You've Got What It Takes] (Michael Buble & Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings)
10 You Can't Hurry Love (Ralph Sall Experience with Sharon Jones)
11 A Change Is Gonna Come (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings)
12 There Was a Time (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings)
13 Amazing Grace (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15133658/SharonJns_1998-2009_SoulfulCovrsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California, in 2008. For the text I tried to go with the retro soul look that matches the music.