Recap Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings at Pabst Theater

It’s become standard for anyone writing about Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings to mention the singer’s age. (For the record, she’s 54.) For a pop singer, Jones is, shall we say, relatively advanced. But if I take note of her accumulated mileage, it’s only out of respect for the new queen of soul. Watching her get down Saturday night at the Pabst Theater made singers half her age seem downright geriatric.

Wearing a sharp and shimmering black dress, Jones entered the stage on dangerously high heels, tiptoeing out to the microphone after the Dap-Kings warmed up the capacity crowd with a few numbers. This would be the most reserved gesture Jones made all evening—by the middle of her first song, “If You Call” from the new I Learned The Hard Way, she was already down on her knees, pleading to an ex-lover that she had “been layin’ alone for hours/but I haven’t slept at all.” After that, there was no stopping her. Whether she was pulling out a random guy from the audience to serenade or showing off her galvanizing dance moves, Jones never let up.

Jones hit her peak with a searing rendition of “When I Come Home,” stretching the song out on an extended call and response routine with the Dap-Kings and her shapely back-up singers, the Dapettes, all while dancing non-stop. It was a masterful performance; I got tired just watching her.

In the studio, Jones painstakingly recreates the sound of classic ’60s and ’70s soul. This, clearly, was the aim of the live show as well. Her love for this music borders on the fanatical, and at times her own material sounds like little more than reproductions of the work of past greats. But in a live setting, even her weaker songs are imbued with an ebullient spirit that’s difficult to resist.

After all, it’s not like you can make the argument that she’s just cashing in on a fad. This is the music that sustained Jones as a child and carried her through an up-and-down adulthood. That she performs traditionalist soul with so much energy, passion, and—most importantly—skill makes the derivative nature of her music mostly forgivable. It might not necessarily be “contemporary” for backing bands to wear matching outfits and spin choreographed dance moves out of the Temptations’ playbook, but you can’t say it’s not still enjoyable.