Sharon Jones
Sharon Jones
Sharon Lafaye Jonesis an American soul and funk singer. She is the lead singer of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, a soul and funk band based in Brooklyn, New York. Jones experienced breakthrough success relatively late in life, releasing her first record when she was 40 years old. In 2014, Jones was nominated for her first Grammy, in the category Best R&B Album, for Give the People What They Want...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGospel Singer
Date of Birth4 May 1956
CityAugusta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
I never took any kind of vocal lessons or teachings of how to - I never even took piano lessons. And a voice just came to me and said, go play the piano in the church...
I'm singing, you know, because I'm happy and I'm free.
Singing is my life. And when I can do that, that's when I'm free. That's when I'm at my happiest, I'm at my most.
Not only do I say, get up and get out, I tell the cancer to get up and get out. And if you don't get up and get out, I'm going to shout you out. And I get to shout.
I was onstage one night and was singing. I hit one note, and I just doubled over. It was like being punched hard in the back. I couldn't put my back up on the plane seat because of the pain. I got massages, thinking it was muscle spasms. The doctor told me at the time that it was my pancreas. I didn't even know.
I'm telling the story, and if I can't tell the story, I'm not going to sing it. And if I don't agree with the story, and if I got to sing something that portrays me as something I'm not, then I'm not going to sing it either. I didn't even want to sing Aretha Franklin's 'Chain of Fools.'
I'm not going to sing something if it doesn't make sense to me, or if it makes me look like I'm begging someone or I'm weak, because that's not me.
I'm not trying to be a pop singer.
I'm sitting at home every time there's a Grammy. It's like, 'What is Sharon doing tonight?' I'm sitting home watching it. But it's OK. But if you go to Europe, there are a lot of young, independent labels that's doing soul music. You might call them retro because they're young and they're trying to imitate somebody. But I ain't retro.
If I can't pronounce it, I don't want to put it in my body. Everything to me now is organic, natural, right from the farm.
When I first played at the Apollo, the owner didn't even know who Sharon Jones was. The Apollo had never seen so many white people coming uptown.
At first, they told me it was just bile-duct cancer, but once they went in, they removed the gallbladder, the head of my pancreas, and a foot-and-a-half of my small intestine, and built me another bile duct and connected it to my stomach. It turned out to be pancreatic cancer, stage two, so, very aggressive.
Everything on my body turned real dark. My toes, under my feet, inside my mouth, under my tongue - I just turned really dark. I'm still here, but it's gonna take a while to get back to normal. Chemo kills all the good cells along with the bad.
I feel like this: When you call me in to do something with you, you must want me to do soul-singing. Because you know I'm a soul singer. Don't ask me to come in and rap. And don't ask me to come in and sing pop.