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Oct 10, 2017 Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings By Christopher Roberts Photography by Jacob Blickenstaff

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Modern soul legend Sharon Jones (of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings) died last year at age 60, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Now The Dap-Kings have announced a final Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings album, Soul of a Woman, recorded in the months before she passed. It’s due out November 17 via Daptone. They have also shared a new song, “Matter of Time,” via its video. Jeff Broadway and Cory Bailey directed the video, which features footage of Jones and the band on road, backstage, and performing live. Label-mate Charles Bradley, who recently also lost his battle with cancer, also shows up briefly in the video. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art.

A press release describes Soul of a Woman as such: “Though we’ll never again see her electric form shimmy across the stage, Sharon Jones continues to give us her soul and her music. She died nearly a year ago, but only now can we hear her final creation. Soul of a Woman captures a singer and a band at the peak of their power. Cutting one last time to eight-track tape at Daptone’s House of Soul studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the band endeavored to create a record that stretches the limits of their soulful sound in all directions, giving us both their rawest and most sophisticated recordings to date-a final statement by one of the most influential rhythm and blues voices of the 21st century.”

The Dap-Kings’ bass player Bosco Mann produced the album and had this to say about it in a press release: “The last couple of years, Sharon was battling. When she was strongest, that’s when we’d go into the studio-Sharon couldn’t phone it in, so we would only work when she was really feeling it.”

Soul of a Woman was initially intended to be an album of string-laden ballads, perhaps accompanied by a tour featuring symphonies or string sections, but as they realized Jones didn’t have a lot of time left, they also recorded some of the funkier music she loved. As Mann says: “Side one is the more raw live side, while side two is more moody and orchestrated-more of a departure from her carnivorous live persona.”

Mann also says that Soul of a Woman ended up being their most collaborative album: “Sharon wanted to hear the story and relate to the song on a personal level. We were all living together on the road, so if somebody was going through something, she was right there with us. She couldn’t really sing something unless she could really own it and sing it from her heart.”

We last interviewed Jones in 2016, just a few months before her passing, and you can read that article here. And here is the tribute we wrote to Jones when she passed.

Soul of a Woman Tracklist:

1. Matter of Time
2. Sail On!
3. Just Give Me Your Time
4. Come and Be a Winner
5. Rumors
6. Pass Me By
7. Searching for a New Day
8. These Tears (No Longer for You)
9. When I Saw Your Face
10. Girl! (You Got to Forgive Him)
11. Call on God

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