Sharon Jones was an American soul and funk singer. She was the lead singer of Sharon Jones& The Dap-Kings. Let’s see some amazing facts and trivia about her!
1.Her full name was Sharon Lafaye Jones.
2. She was born on May 4, 1956.
3. Sharon Jones was born in Augusta, Georgia, the daughter of Ella Mae Price Jones and Charlie Jones, living in adjacent North Augusta, South Carolina.
4. Sharon Jones was the youngest of six children; her siblings are Dora, Charles, Ike, Willa and Henry.
5. Jones’s mother raised her deceased sister’s four children as well as her own children.
6. She moved the family to New York City when Sharon was a young child.
7.As children, she and her brothers would often imitate the singing and dancing of James Brown. Her mother happened to know Brown, who was also from Augusta.
8. Sharon Jones grew up in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
9. In 1975, she graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn.
10. She attended Brooklyn College
11. A regular gospel singer in church, Jones often entered talent shows backed by local funk bands in the early 1970s.
12. Session work then continued with backing singing, often credited to Lafaye Jones, but in the absence of any recording contract as a solo singer, she spent many years working as a corrections officer at Rikers Island and as an armored car guard for Wells Fargo Bank, until receiving a mid-life career break in 1996 after she appeared on a session backing the soul and deep funk legend Lee Fields.
13. The session was organized by Gabriel Roth and Philip Lehman, owner of the now defunct French recordPure Records.
14. Sharon Jones was the only one of three singers called to the session to show up. Having completed all the backing parts herself, Roth and Lehman were suitably impressed with her performance and recorded “Switchblade”, a solo track with Jones.
15. This track and “The Landlord” were included on the Soul Providers’ album Soul Tequila, released by Lehman on Pure circa 1996.
16. The Soul Providers—with members of the Brooklyn bands Antibalas and the Mighty Imperials—later formed the Dap-Kings, Jones’s current backing band.
17. Launched on the back of the popularity of Desco Records, Daptone Records’ first release was a full-length album by Sharon Jones.
18.In 2002, under the name Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, the group released the album Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, for which they received immediate attention and acclaim from enthusiasts, DJs and collectors.
19. With three more albums under their belt, Naturally (2005), 100 Days, 100 Nights (2007) and I Learned the Hard Way (2010) they are seen by many as the spearhead of a revival of soul and funk.
20. In 2015, during an interview with Billboard about her Grammy nomination, Jones discussed her commitment to the Daptone Label, an independent.
21. She cited artistic freedom and the commitment to the band.
22. Sharon Jones had a small part in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker, in which she played Lila, a juke joint singer.
23. Her performance of Lucille Bogan’s “That’s What My Baby Likes” is featured in the film, and additional covers by Jones of songs from the 1930s are included on the film’s soundtrack
24. For a long time, she lived with her mother in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, New York
25. Sharon Jones has sometimes been called, especially early in her late renaissance of a career, the Female James Brown.
26. Among Jones’ influences are James Brown, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Thom Bell, Otis Redding, Ike & Tina Turner, Marva Whitney and everyone from Motown.
27. In addition, Jones also cites more recently known artists, such as Michael Jackson, Prince, Erykah Badu and Beyoncé
28. It was announced on June 3, 2013, that Jones had been diagnosed with bile duct cancer and underwent surgery, which forced her to postpone the release of the group’s fifth album, Give the People What They Want.
29. The diagnosis was later changed to stage II pancreatic cancer, for which Jones had surgery on her liver and underwent chemotherapy. The chemotherapy caused hair loss, and for a time she performed bald, refusing to wear wigs.
30. Sharon Jones died on Friday, November 18, 2016 in Cooperstown, New York of complications from pancreatic cancer, aged 60
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