Sugarman And His Soulful Harvest

As the co-founder of the Brooklyn-based, traditional funk-driven Daptone Records label, Neal Sugarman knows a thing or two about harvesting the funk and soul sounds trademark to the 1960s and 1970s in a new and innovative way.

"For us, we've always been interested in this style of music whether it was in the funk idiom or the jazz idiom or the gospel idiom so really it's just about making records we like and records we like to listen to," said Sugarman. "Everything comes and goes for a second and recently there have been hip-hop kids interested in break beats so suddenly old-school funk music came back into the scene again and I'm not even sure what's going on with it right now. I'm not really watching the trends so closely. We are just trying to make music that we like and I think when we are making the records the question is whether it's grooving or not."

Sugarman, a tenor saxophonist, formed his soul band Sugarman 3 & Co., which has put out three albums since 1998.

"When we put out the first Sugarman 3 record, people didn't know if it was an old or a new record and it wasn't like I was trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, but we made the cover and it looked old. Still to this day some people don't really know if it's old or new or if it's young white musicians or older black musicians," said Sugarman.

The group's sound recently shifted from soul jazz to heavy funk with its latest work entitled, "Pure Cane Sugar." It's a noticeable departure from its two previous albums, 1998's "Sugar's Boogaloo" and 1999's "Soul Donkey," a recording rated as one of the top 50 soul jazz essentials rated by Downbeat magazine.

"You think about jazz music or Latin music, and there are basic fundamentals to that kind of music that almost need to be in everything that you do for it to sound a certain way," said Sugarman. "In some ways it's like a discipline and you can be creative within the discipline which is always the interesting part. We are really committed to that."

In 2001, Sugarman reunited with Desco Records owner, producer and songwriter Gabriel Roth and established Daptone Records.

"It's great to have control over our music and that's why we started this label," said Sugarman. "For us, starting Daptone came out of a necessity for a lack of labels that were able to commit to a musical profile that we wanted to be involved with. We want people to know that when they pick up a Daptone product, it's going to be a particular quality and sound. The hard thing is trying to get the records out there so we have to play the game the major labels play like advertising and you need money to compete."

"Pure Cane Sugar" features Lee Fields, Naomi Davis and Charles Bradley on vocals. Fields is known around town as working with some of the best artists such as B.B. King, Kool and the Gang and Bobby Womack.

Daptone Records is an artist-operated label known for its release of 45s, vinyl albums and CDs with cover art that could be mistaken for 1960s and 1970s reissues. The albums are best sellers among DJs craving for obscure funk recordings.