Kings Theater Issues Ticket Refunds While Remembering Soul Singer Sharon Jones
Workers at the Kings Theater had a difficult job over the weekend: Calling patrons who had purchased tickets to next month’s appearance by Sharon Jones to tell them the concert is cancelled because the singer died on Friday, November 18. Jones, who was born May 4, 1956, was scheduled to appear at the theater on December 9 with her band, the Dap-KIngs.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Sharon Jones has passed away after a heroic battle against pancreatic cancer,” according to an announcement on her website. “She was surrounded by her loved ones, including the Dap-Kings.”
Jones had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2012. Following treatment, the disease went into remission and Jones resumed her live appearances. When she took the stage, “Whatever pain is gone. You forget about everything. There is no cancer. There is no sickness. You’re just floating, looking in their faces and hearing them scream. That’s all that is to me,” Jones told Rolling Stone.
“I have cancer; cancer don’t have me,” she told the magazine. However, she announced in July at the premiere of Miss Sharon Jones!, a documentary profiling her rise to stardom after decades struggling to break into the music business, that the cancer had returned.
Born in Augusta, Georgia but raised in Brooklyn, Jones began singing in her church and was entering talent shows with soul and funk bands by the early 70s. She appeared as a backing vocalist on a variety of recordings but was unable to secure a recording contract on her own. A record producer in the 90s told her she was “”too fat, too black, too short and too old,” she recalled in an interview for Miss Sharon Jones!
She worked many different jobs to support herself while trying to achieve a higher profile in the music business, including a stint as a corrections officer at Riker’s Island. Her breakthrough came in 1996 when she supplied backing vocals for a record by funk legend Lee Fields at a session organized by record producers Gabriel Roth and Philip Lehman.
Roth and Lehman had formed the band the Soul Providers to revive the classic sound of soul and funk acts from the 60s and 70s. Impressed by Jones performance singing behind Fields, they added members of the popular Brooklyn live act Antibalas and the Mighty Imperials to form the Dap-Kings, with Jones out front as the vocalist.
The group never had a radio hit, but beginning with their initial release in 2002, Dip Dappin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the band’s renown grew steadily. Their high-energy live shows were the source of much of the band’s acclaim, including a free performance in Prospect Park that kicked off the annual Celebrate Brooklyn festival earlier this year.
Their 2014 Give the People What They Want was nominated for a grammy for Best R&B album. Jones and the band were slated to play tunes from their 2015 Christmas record, It’s a Holiday Soul Party, at the Kings Theater show.
In lieu of flowers, the singer’s web page suggests fans remember Jones by making donations to The Lustgarten Organization (which supports pancreatic cancer research), to the James Brown Family Foundation, or to Little Kids Rock, which funds music education in schools.
If you purchased a ticket through the box office and did not receive a call regarding a refund, you can contact the Kings Theater at (718) 856-5464 or boxoffice@kingstheater.com.