I never quite made my life match up to getting the full Sharon Jones experience.
My friend Josh Powers told me about her back in the mid-aughts, had been to a couple of her shows in Lawrence, Kansas and said they were amazing. I found my to to one of her albums and could not believe her albums had been made during this century.
When the time came that she visited Lawrence again, my wife and I got tickets. But Jo was pregnant, battling pretty severe morning sickness that lasted all day long. We made an attempt to go to and enjoy the show -- I remember Jones was wearing a skimpy dress, and worked the stage hard, shimmying and shaking all over the stage, and even then I knew I'd never have that much energy again -- but Jo was miserably ill, so we left after a half-dozen songs or so.
I remember being cranky that Amy Winehouse got famous using Jones' backup band.
There was one other opportunity to listen to Sharon Jones for me. It was Philly, 2011, and we were broke and barely employed. But Jones was playing a free show on Broad Street that spring -- it would've been a huge crowd, we probably would've been miserable. But as it happened, we didn't get to go. I was in the hospital, septic with infection and vomiting green bile. The next day I had a surgery that saved my life -- the first of three I would have that year. I've been broken since then. But I lived and got to see my son grow up.
And another opportunity to go see Sharon Jones live -- in what, I gather, was her element -- never presented itself before she died.
Right now, I'm listening to her album, "Naturally," and ... I still can't believe it was made during this century.
