Wishing you a very Soulful Holiday Season with “IT’S A HOLIDAY SOUL PARTY” by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Sharon Jones, the fiery Grammy-nominated soul singer of the Dap-Kings. Image by Jesse Dittmar/Redux
I’ll be honest and say that at 22 years old I’ve been to at most five, maybe six Christmas parties. I’ve tasted eggnog perhaps seven times. This isn’t because I’m some mean grinch who makes fighting the War On Christmas my entire personality. It’s just that I was raised in a Jewish family and we simply don’t celebrate Christmas. In spite of my upbringing, or perhaps because of it, the music of Christmas feels inescapable, and the soundtrack to the Holiday Season is still a cliche to me. Starting in middle school jazz bands, it behooved me as a young trumpet player to get hip to Christmas Jazz Standards since there was no denying the music’s popularity. That said, I can only listen “Jingle Bells” so many times before I get bored of it.
Lately, it’s impossible to step into a pharmacy to pick up rapid Covid19 tests without hearing Mariah Carey tell me exactly what she wants for Christmas (ps I’m pretty sure it’s youuuuu, baby). You can’t grab a coffee without Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts. By the way, for how much folks love imagining chestnuts roasting on an open fire, do you know anybody whose actually done it?
But there’s one holiday album that I’ll never grow tired of. It’ll never be a cliche or overplayed for me. In fact, I’ll even say that I actually WISH that the grocery store would ONLY play the 2015 album “It’s a Holiday Soul Party” by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. At 11 tracks and about 34 minutes, it’s short enough that listening straight through won’t be a drag, and has enough variety to hold a listener’s (or dancer’s) interest, no matter their taste.
Sharon Jones was an inspiring powerhouse singer backed by a powerhouse band. May her memory be a blessing. If you don’t recognize their name, you might know the sound of The Dap-Kings for playing with Amy Winehouse on “Back To Black” and the horn section is so tight that Questlove tapped trumpeter Dave Guy and saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith to join the hiphop group The Roots.
“It’s a Holiday Soul Party” opens up with the funkiest Hannukah song to ever bless my ears “8 Days (Of Hannukah)” that has a count-off like it came straight from the James Brown band. This Dap-Kings original has verses loaded with authentic expressions of Hannukah and Jewish culture. From the rebel hero Maccabees, to stopping at the Kosher Butcher shop, to lighting candles and children playing dreidel, the song “8 Days” is more than just a throwaway inclusion to please Jewish listeners. It’s a worthy addition to the Hannukah songbook. The music itself also has little hidden surprises, like a musical nod to the classic “I Have A Little Dreidel” during the instrumental breakdown around the 2’07” mark.
The next track is “Ain’t No Chimmneys in the Projects” which is an original penned by Sharon Jones. Again Sharon Jones takes a page from the James Brown playbook: dynamic drumming, horn blasts, a minor-key swell of strings. But unlike Brown's man-first music, Jones' song centers the strength and resourcefulness of African-American women. When Sharon Jones was a little girl, she used to wonder how Santa could pile toys under her tree when there "ain't no chimneys in the projects." As a child, Sharon Jones was bold enough to challenge Christmas dogma about Santa by noting her neighborhood's chimney shortage: "Mama, can you tell me how this can be?" she asked like a young existentialist.
Jones' mother restores her faith with the tale of a chimney that appears after the child falls asleep, and along the way, Mom takes her place as the song's true hero. Jones soon turns her rueful declaration into a sort of celebration: "There ain't no chimneys — ho, ho, ho, ho, no, no, no — in the projects!" Because, ultimately, Santa Claus and chimneys are irrelevant when compared to another more important Christmas benefactor. "Mama," Jones sings, "you are the one."
This high energy Tina Turner-esque rendition of the classic “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin isn’t your grandmother’s “White Christmas”. If it is, can you please get me an invite me to the Holiday Party next year? There’s not much more left for me to say on this track besides the fact that I danced in front of the mirror pantomiming horn moves and choreography while writing the review.
Track four is the somewhat self-aware tune “Just Another Christmas Song (This Time I’ll Sing Along)” written by Dap-Kings drummer Homer Steinweiss. Unlike Ringo Starr of The Beatles, when drummer Homer Steinweiss brings an original song to the band, it’s a very good idea. The guitar plucking out the beginning to Jingle Bells before descending into the groove primes us for lyrics that playfully mock the clichés of Christmas music.
“Silent Night” is a bold choice when recording a Christmas album. You better have something new to bring to the musical table or else it’ll just be lost in the sea of Christmas recordings. But this version does NOT disappoint. Instead of a 3/4 waltz-y feel the jingling sleigh bells and otherworldly pocket of the Dap-Kings rhythm section establish groove in 6/8 that could also be felt like a slow blues shuffle. And that’s just how the guitar riff opens the tune before the rest of the band comes in.
“Big Bulbs” captures the youthful joy and fascination walking through the neighborhood and seeing businesses and residences decorated with flashing lights. It also showcases the delicious harmonies of Sharon Jones with backup vocalists Starr Duncan Lowe and Saundra Williams (who also wrote the song). Nothing but sleigh bells, guitar, and trumpet. With a stripped down instrumentation, the talent of the singers has extra room to come through the mix.
“Please Come Home for Christmas” was first written and released by blues pianist and singer Charles Brown in 1960. I can think of no singer or band to better interpret this bluesy Christmas tune. With no sleigh bells and just the hi-hats ticking, each beat feels like the hands of a clock passing, reminding the singer and listener the pain of being alone. This theme of being alone or away for Christmastime is made all the more powerful this year with heightened concerns and uncertainty facing many people - is it possible to safely get together to celebrate the holidays as planned? Or might we have to settle again for phone calls and video chats?
“Funky Little Drummer Boy” is better than any of your favorite “Little Drummer Boy” recordings. Yes, even Pentatonix or Alex Boye.
This version of “Silver Bells” by Jay Livingston, Ray Evans features a slightly out-of-tune upright piano, the kind you might find in homes and church basements across the United States. This gives the arrangement a literally “homey” vibe. The Dap-Kings lay down a kind of 60’s pop beat, easy to dance to. I usually don’t imagine myself doing The Twist to “Silver Bells” but I do on this version, and that’s a very very good thing.
“Word of Love” by Dap-Kings founding member Binky Griptite is at once both heartwarming and gut wrenching. An emotional plea to people around the world, the song is not so much about celebrating Christmas so much as translating the stereotypical Christmas spirit into motivation to create lasting change. To channel the festive mood into something so “maybe the whole world might find a way to make this feeling last all year around.” The lyrics continue, emphasizing that it’s not up to any ONE of us, but is up to ALL of us, singing “Whether you’re Agnostic, Muslim, Christian, or Jew / Children of the World, they’re depending on you… It don’t matter if you’re Black, you’re white, you’re blue, you’re Chinese / everybody in this world we’ve got to get together please / in a World of Love.”
Finally, we come to “God Rest Ye Merry Gents” and ironically, Sharon Jones and her backup vocalists Starr and Saundra get a chance to rest their own vocal cords. This song is for the band to stretch out. For the instrumentalists to groove and prove themselves heralds of a Soul Revival. The horns open with a musical quote from “In The Hall Of The Mountain King” before getting into the thick of it with the horns carrying the melody and baritone sax doubling the bass guitar to fatten out the low end. The piano solo rings out with a hauntingly beautiful minor-key version of Jingle Bells cueing the rest of the band to get ready to comes back in. Finally, saving the best for last, a trumpet solo carries on till the end of the track as the music fades out
There are lots of reasons I love “It’s a Holiday Soul Party” and it holds a special place in my heart as the Greatest Holiday Album of All Time for a number of reasons. But I think what sells me the most on it is how it is so thoroughly refreshing it is. There’s a few original tunes, so already it’s kept off the thin ice of clichés, and the classics that Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings do take on are handled with such soulful funky good vibes that listeners don’t have to even think about the run-of-the-mill arrangements that lots of singers and bands settle with. Listen to “It’s a Holiday Soul Party” wherever you get your music by clicking the links below.
