Sharon Jones: Back On Her Feet, And Back On The Road
TO SEE VIDEO:
http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/story/sharon-jones-back-her-feet-and-back-road/http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/story/sharon-jones-back-her-feet-and-back-road/
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
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Sharon Jones' latest album with the Dap-Kings, Give the People What They Want, is out now. (Paul McGeiver/Courtesy of the artist)
Prison guard-turned-soul singer Sharon Jones
is known for her vintage R&B sound and her energetic stage
presence. But a recent battle with cancer put her music career on hold,
and made her doubt that she'd ever sing again. In a conversation with Soundcheck host
John Schaefer, Jones reflects on her path to recovery, and about
hitting the road again with her band the Dap-Kings. Plus, they take a
listen to some of her latest album, Give The People What They Want.
Interview Highlights
Sharon Jones, on preparing for her February "comeback" concert at the Beacon Theatre:I was really scared because laying around for those months and not having energy... where I was cut, straight across the diaphragm, it was just like as a singer I couldn't [breathe.] Actually from June to September I was bent over, I couldn't straighten up from the cut. I didn't even think about singing.On whether she thought she would ever perform the songs off of her already-recorded album, Give The People What They Want.
I thought that I would never even perform that song. I thought it would probably be -- the people would be like, "Oh, I never got to see her show." Or, "Oh, I've seen her show, you should've saw her, man." I just thought I would never perform it again.On making the decision to tell her fans about her bile duct cancer diagnosis:
When the doctor told me that I really had to take the chemo, the management staff, the publicists, they said 'Don't let them know you're taking the chemo right now. Try to wait until close to when we're going to release the record.' I was like, "Are you crazy? You don't understand -- I have to let my fans know." For one thing, they're going to start this chemo and I'm going to lose my hair.... I was like, "I don't want this. I want my fans to know."On deciding to sport her bald head on stage:
When I was sitting in that chair, and they were shaving my little braids off, tears were falling. I went to the Cancer Society, they have the wigs and stuff, and they tried on all these wigs. And every time they put a wig on I would look like an older woman. One wig they put on, I said, "No offense to Miss Dionne Warwick -- I love her -- but I look like Dionne Warwick the psychic!" And I just couldn't do it.On where she was and what she was doing during the summer of 1994:
I left corrections, and I went to Wells Fargo. I probably was still a security guard at Wells Fargo. Because when I met Gabe [Roth] and those guys, I had my uniform on. I remember that now. When I went into the studio and recorded "Damn It's Hot," I walked in and I had this gun on my side, this little suit with the little stripe down the middle.
Those guys were experimenting, doing little 45's in a little studio. This studio was so raggedy, the air conditioning was like [makes a clanking sound]. They were like, "Turn it off!" So they turned it off, in New York in the summer, and it's like 90-something degrees in there. And they're playing this music, and I'm like, "That's a nice song -- but what's the name of it?" And they said, "We don't know." And I was like, "Damn, it's hot in here!" So that became part of the song.
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