Sharon Lafaye Jones (May 4, 1956 – November 18, 2016) was an American soul and funk singer. She was the lead singer of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, a soul and funk band based in Brooklyn, New York.
By the sound of them, you would have thought Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings started making funk-threaded soul music together in the 1960s. Few devotedly retro acts were as convincing. Few singers as skilled as Sharon Jones would be willing to invest in a sound so fully occupied by the likes of Bettye LaVette and Tina Turner in the
Jones, like James Brown, was born in Augusta, Georgia; there she sang in her church choir.. As a teenager, she moved with her family to the Bedford Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. In 1975, she graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. She attended Brooklyn College. She immersed herself in 1970s disco and funk with an eye toward cutting a record of her own. Instead, studios came calling and with them steady work
Jones released her first full-length with the Dap-Kings, Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, after signing with Daptone Records in 2002. Years of touring behind it, as well as cutting singles with other artists (including Greyboy) ensued.
In 2005, Jones re-teamed with the Dap-Kings for the winking groovefest Naturally, following it up two years later with 100 Days, 100 Nights. Jones also had a bit part in The Great Debaters as the singer Lila. A new studio effort, I Learned the Hard Way, appeared in 2010.
In 2013, Jones revealed that she had been diagnosed with cancer -- initially in the bile ducts, and later advanced to stage two pancreatic cancer -- but she continued to perform as often as her therapy schedule would permit, sometimes appearing on-stage with a bald head after chemotherapy caused her hair to fall out. In late 2013, Jones was well enough to complete work on the next Dap-Kings album, and Give the People What They Want appeared in January 2014. Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple premiered a film about the vocalist, Miss Sharon Jones!, at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; Jones was in attendance for the debut screening, and revealed that her cancer had returned, but defiantly added, "I'm gonna keep fighting, we got a long way to go."
Sadly, however, she would lose her valiant battle with cancer, which took her life, at age 60, in Cooperstown, New York of November of that year. Shortly before her death, Jones completed vocals for a final album with the Dap-Kings. That album, Soul of a Woman, was released in November 2017, a year after her death.
(Edited from Wikipedia but mainly All Music bio by Tammy La Gorce)