“Too fat, too Black, too short, and too old.”

In just nine tiny words to 20-some-odd-year-old Sharon Jones, a Sony record exec hit every square in Racist-Sexist-Ageist-Fatphobic Bingo, and every insecurity the world forces on Black women.

“Black is beautiful” and “Black Girl Magic” aren’t just marketable clichés and meme fodder—they’re personal affirmations and positive reinforcement against the thousand tiny cuts of white supremacy in beauty standards, professional life, and simple every day existence.

So when those words were put so plainly and cruelly to Sharon, she turned them into her own affirmation disguised as a challenge. Too fat, too Black, too short, too old? We’ll see.

But it’s never that easy to overcome, is it? For the next 20 years, Sharon worked side jobs as a wedding singer, Rikers Island corrections officer, and Wells Fargo armored truck guard to pay the bills while she chipped away at the industry as a background vocalist. A lot of people don’t even get that far, but still she wanted more than those pesky cultural implications that Black women are great for doing the hard work that allows someone else shine, but not enough to stand in the spotlight themselves, and she knew her worth. It wasn’t until Sharon was literally the only vocalist to show up that industry men realized she was a star.

The producers for soul legend Lee Fields had booked three background singers—one for each basic vocal range: soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto—but studio time is money, so when only one singer arrived, they thought they’d simply make do with what they got. They didn’t know they’d gotten a vocal powerhouse and MORE than their money’s worth. Sharon recorded all three backing parts, and then the producers wanted to record her solo.

In 1996 at 40 years old, Sharon Jones appeared as a soloist for the very first time on a major record release. Turns out, the band who released that album (with a handful of lineup changes) would later end up backing her full-time as the Dap-Kings. SEVEN albums later, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are soul-funk legends, fueled by the band’s tight sound, Sharon’s unbelievable vocals, and songs rooted in gospel, funk, protest, R&B, and dance music. Indeed the whole has proven greater than the sum of its parts, but MISS! SHARON! JONES!—as she’s introduced by the leader of the Dap-Kings for every stage show—is who everybody comes to see.

And I can prove it.

The featured video is live from a 2012 Jimmy Kimmel Show tour, and the fact that Sharon & the Dap-Kings perform a song we all know and love makes it the perfect example of Sharon’s skill and showmanship. This isn’t even Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” It’s Sharon Jones’s. For someone to deliver this song with such incredible vocal talent, AND THEN play to the crowd, direct her band, AND shake something the whole time? I don’t care who you are… just watching Sharon is gonna wear you out, but hearing her will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Below you’ll see her seemingly endless stage energy, but just a year later, Sharon announced what would be her first valiant battle against cancer. She famously refused to wear a wig to cover hair loss due to chemo because she had nothing to be ashamed of, and after being told that she was too <insert insult here> to succeed, too bald would not be added to that list. Her second battle eventually took her life in 2016, and 60-year-old Sharon Jones left us went to shine elsewhere. The world-at-large continued uninterrupted. But the music world was absolutely devastated at the loss with historic venues around the country paying tribute to the too-good-for-this-world Sharon Jones.

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