One of the reasons we here at GLONO love Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings is their relentless attention to detail as they strive to recreate the late-60s soul sound—and, of course, how successful they are in that pursuit. From the arrangements to the instrumentation to the recording techniques, a Dap Kings record is a performance art piece in itself.
But what is sound without image? Applying the same sort of focus on the packaging of their material completes the overall effect. For a glimpse of just how far they go to recreate the look and feel of the records that inspired them in the first place, check out this behind-the-scenes report of the photo shoot for their upcoming LP, I Learned the Hard Way (out April 2010).
Money quote:
We used the back yard of the studio and the adjacent fire escape to make a photo that was in keeping with the look and feel of urban group shot covers that were seen a lot in the late 60’s and early 70’s (The Impressions ‘This is My Country’, The Supremes ‘Love Child’, etc.) We went with the square format Hasselblad with negative film to get the same look and feel from the period.