Sharon Jones

"Until the '90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was 'too black, too fat, too short, and too old.' Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn't have the looks." 
Sharon Jones

"I wasn't what they was looking for. They just looked at me and they didn't like what they saw: a short, black woman."
Sharon Jones



"Sharon Jones has battled racism, record companies and cancer."
The New York Times

Sharon Lafaye Jones - the "Female James Brown" - was born in Augusta, Georgia on 4th of May 1956. Due to segregation laws, her mother had to deliver her in the hospital's storage closet (via). Years later, when she visited her hometown North Augusta, South Carolina (where she spent the first years), she pointed out "a shop with an owner who used to sell black kids rotten candy, and also taught his parrot to greet customer with racial slurs" (via).
Jones was a singer for much of her life but released her first album when she was 40 and started getting serious attention rather later in her life. She was told to be "too short, too fat, too black and too old" but became "an unstoppable frontwoman" (via). Sharon Jones passed away on 18th of November 2016 (via).



"I chose not to put a wig on. The reason why I chose to come out with the cancer thing is because there's somebody out there who can see that all sickness isn't unto death. That it's something you can't change at that point in time, so you just got to go with it. Don't be ashamed. Don't be ashamed of looking at yourself."
Sharon Jones

"In Rikers, you had the Italians over here, the Spanish over here, the Blacks here, then there would be your Christians here and your Muslim brotherhood here. It's just like the outside, but in very closed quarters where you have to get along or else."
Sharon Jones (who used to work as a prison guard to support herself)

"A lot of people call me gay because they don't see me with anyone."
Sharon Jones

YouTube Selection (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings)

- Retreat: LISTEN/WATCH
- I Learned the Hard Way: LISTEN/WATCH
- The Game Gets Old: LISTEN/WATCH
- Tell Me: LISTEN/WATCH
- If you Call: LISTEN/WATCH
- 100 Days, 100 Nights: LISTEN/WATCH
- Stranger to My Happiness: LISTEN/WATCH
- Live at the Olympia (Wow!): LISTEN/WATCH



Photographs via and via and via and via and via