Sharon Jones didn't make her first record until she was 40, but from her first album in 2002, with the Dap-Kings, she became the focus of a revival of a soul and funk music. And you couldn't have asked for a better torch bearer.
2016 was a watershed year, culminating in Sharon's death from cancer on November 18.
The movie Miss Sharon Jones tracked her on tour in the throes of her health battle, and was widely viewed, and shown here in last year's Film Festival. In Soul of a Woman, we get to share her final recordings. The title is a play on Blind Willie Johnson's 1930 song The Soul of a Man.
Together with the Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones delivers a set of songs familiar to the audience she has attracted over the last 15 years. Up tempo, high energy soul, reminiscent of the Tamla Motown and Stax labels of the 1960s and early 70s.
As she said herself, "What comes from the heart, reaches the heart." It's a BIG sound, with a full brass section, alongside an expanded group under the Dap-Kings name.
If you want to go to the source of today's soul sound, then here's where to start. The Soul of a Woman, from a woman who put everything into her final shows and recordings. Sharon Jones.
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Soul of a Woman