Bosco Mann

Roth was born on August 17, 1974, in San Bernardino County, California. Gabe and his older sister, Samra, born in 1972, were raised in Riverside by their parents, Andrew and Diane Roth, both of whom practiced law in the community and worked on civil rights and discrimination cases.[4] Roth said his early aspirations were to be a math teacher and that he did not consider a career in the music industry an option.[5]

Roth (far left) with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings in 2015.

After moving to New York City to attend New York University in the 1990s, he met record collector and former label owner Phillipe Lehman. After producing funk tracks together, the two launched the record label Desco Records in 1997. Located in Manhattan, Desco produced limited pressings of Lee Fields, The Sugarman 3, and the earliest Sharon Jones recordings, among other funk and afrobeat records.[6] Roth also played with the label's house band, the Soul Providers, and recorded and wrote material for Antibalas and other bands on the Desco label, often under a pseudonym.[7]

In 1999–2000, Lehman and Roth decided to part ways, with Lehman going to found Soul Fire Records and Roth partnering with The Sugarman 3 saxophonist Neal Sugarman to found Daptone Records. Daptone was home for the new Sharon Jones project, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, of which Roth was producer, primary songwriter, and bassist for the band's nearly twenty year history.

Roth is an outspoken proponent for analog recording, having once said, "Show me a computer that sounds as good as a tape machine and I'll use it."[8] The distinctive, tinted glasses Roth wears on stage and in interviews are the result of eye injuries he sustained in a 2002 car accident which put him in the hospital for ten days and left him temporarily blind.[4]

As a recording engineer and producer, Roth has won two Grammy Awards:

Amy Winehouse's acclaimed Back to Black album was recorded with the Dap-Kings at Daptone's House of Soul Studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn in 2006, and in 2012 Booker T. Jones' The Road From Memphis was also recorded there. As a member of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, he was nominated for the 2014 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album for Give the People What They Want.[9]

Note, as co-label owner of Daptone Records, Roth executive produces every record released on the label with Neil Sugarman.

With Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

• Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (2002)
• Naturally (2005)
• 100 Days, 100 Nights (2007)
• I Learned the Hard Way (2010)
• Give the People What They Want (2014)
• It's a Holiday Soul Party (2015)
• Soul of a Woman (2017)

• Gabriel Roth interviewed at the Red Bull Music Academy, London, February 2010.
• Sarah Moore, "Gold Mining with Daptone: Interview with Gabriel Roth", PopMatters, January 17, 2010.
• Brad Farberman, "Behind the 'scene' with Daptone Records founder Gabe Roth" Archived 2014-08-21 at the Wayback Machine, Wax Poetics, April 6, 2010.