CAMDEN, N.J. _ The soul singer Sharon Jones, afflicted repeatedly with cancer but prone to rocking out as though possessed by James Brown's ghost, looked disconcertingly ill.
Just behind a stage where about a dozen musicians from her band the Dap-Kings were sweating and jumping, electrifying an amphitheater crowd on this sweltering Sunday, Jones sat shaking and shivering. She pulled a hood up over her head, bald from chemotherapy treatments, and seemed to disappear inside herself. She clutched a blanket around her body and asked for some water.
"Where am I?" Jones, the subject of Barbara Kopple's new documentary "Miss Sharon Jones!," said meekly to an assistant.
"Camden," the assistant replied, kneeling and taking Jones' hands in her own. "It's Philly, but technically it's Camden. Remember, you flew in this morning?"
Jones barely seemed to register the information. The band kept going as fans of Hall & Oates, which was headlining, filtered into the BB&T Pavilion, a 20,000-seat outdoor venue on the banks of the Delaware River, across from the Philadelphia skyline.
Then, as if some kind of newly hatched alien species, Jones started to slowly stretch her arms. She unfolded herself from her low chair and stood up. Her mouth moved in a series of low-rumble vocal exercises. She began walking in a circle and, a moment later, when a band member called her name to introduce her, she bounded out from behind the stage to take the microphone.
Within a minute, Jones' silver shoes had flown off and she was bouncing in ecstatic rhythm, her mouth _ her whole body _ inhabiting her style of hot soul.
"I don't know how many of you know me," she said to the audience between songs, using a preacherly cadence. "But I'm battling. No matter how much pain I'm in I can always sing. This has been hell I'm going through."
The crowd, whose size was growing as the set moved along, began to clap. "I say to the cancer, get up and get out. GET. UP. AND. GET. OUT."
At 60, Sharon Jones has lived a lot of lives. She says that does not deter her from living a few more.
Born into poverty in North Augusta, S.C., near the Georgia border, Jones always had a powerful voice. She deployed it in church gospel groups, but not anyplace else. As the Oscar-winning Kopple describes in her film _ it focuses on the singer's' first bout with cancer, in 2013 _ Jones was overlooked by the music industry. "I was too short, too fat and too black," the performer likes to say with her combination of candor and endearing orneriness.
Instead, she spent years working blue-collar jobs, as a guard at Rikers Island prison or for a Wells Fargo armored car, singing mainly at her gospel church. (Jones spent decades living in Brooklyn but has recently returned to live near her childhood home.)
Twenty years ago, Jones caught a break in a stint backing up the funk performer Lee Fields. She nabbed the attention of Gabriel Roth, who at the time lived in New York and was the leader of several horns-heavy retro-soul outfits. Soon he had formed the Dap-Kings, drawing from past collaborators and centering it on Jones. She and Roth have been making music ever since.
Their work has been critically acclaimed if hardly chart-topping _ throwback '70s soul and funk is seriously out of fashion in this auto-tuning, super-producing era. But thanks to Jones and Roth _ not to mention backup singers the Dapettes and a host of talented brass and percussion instrumentalists _ the albums began to earn them a niche following.
In 2007 came "100 Days, 100 Nights," with a breakout title song, and then, in 2010, "I Learned the Hard Way," which featured "Better Things," an anthem-of-courage anchored by a catchy piano hook ("I'm a better woman than I have been/Because I don't think of things way back when").
Mainstream acceptance of a sort finally arrived in 2014, when she and the Dap-Kings put out "Give the People What They Want," which was nominated for a Grammy for R&B album. ("They gave it to Babyface and Toni Braxton," she said. "When did they put out an album? And is that soul? They need a separate category for soul. Bring back soul.")
But sales remained modest. Touring, instead, has been a staple. Jones has been out on the road a lot lately, including a gig in Memphis the night before that had them on a 5 a.m. flight into Philadelphia. The current tour will stretch across the U.S., coming to the Hollywood Bowl in September and culminating in Las Vegas. A planned European leg has just been canceled due to an unexpected medical procedure.
This marathon is happening even as her cancer, which is centered in her pancreas, returned last year _ she announced the news at the Toronto International Film Festival, after the premiere of "Miss Sharon Jones!" Rather than sit and convalesce, as she can be seen doing for chunks of the film, she decided to fight through.
"Last time she said she wouldn't tour. She took a different route this time," said Alex Kadvan, Jones' longtime manager, with an expression that said he long ago learned not to question, or underestimate, his client.
On this day she was feeling the effects of a recent blood transfusion. As she sat backstage several hours before the show, she ran through her litany of medical issues, but then said they didn't matter, "I don't want to get on stage where I can't move around. But as long as I got my heart and my strength, I'm going to get out there. The adrenaline gets you going and it all goes away."
She reflected on time lost, and time left: "I started late, and I suppose I only got a few more years. So I want to get it in while I can, before I go away from here," she said.
Jones, who is not married and has no children, said she has begun thinking about wills and estate planning. She expresses this with a kind of matter-of-factness that can come from staring down cancer for several years.
For now, she is performing. She maintains a kind of steadfastness about her situation and the nature of art and recognition. "I really would like to sell millions of records. I don't know why I haven't," she said.
Asked what would have brought her career happiness, she paused. "You know when I would have been happy?" she said. "If I had won that Grammy. It would have been, 'She won that Grammy, and now she's gone.' That would have made me happy."
For all her rueful talk though, her on-stage persona remains unbowed. "If you look around during a set and have to say which one of us is going through cancer, she's the last one you'd guess," Roth said. "This is her therapy. She doesn't want to sit at home and feel sorry for herself. This is how she feels better _ feeding off the crowd.
Kopple, known for music-themed docs including "Wild Man Blues" about Woody Allen's jazz band tour and the Dixie Chicks-centered "Shut Up & Sing," said she thinks Jones is motivated by another dynamic. "She has a very strong sense of wanting to belong, especially with the band. She never wants to feel left out. You can see it in all these ways _ 'Don't forget about me; don't forget to include me.'"
At the show, that sense of belonging was apparent with both the band and the crowd. At the start of the set, many concertgoers were halfheartedly paying attention as they clutched plastic cups of beer. As the spontaneous set progressed _ the Dap-Kings use no set lists, just follow Jones and Roth where they want to go in the moment _ the crowd began to take notice.
The band ran through some of the their go-to numbers, including "100 Days," a cover of Gladys Knight's "Every Beat of My Heart" and "Get Up and Get Out." Jones torqued and twisted in a red dress, a funkified fireball in her element. Jones' voice manages to be robust and wide-ranging at the same time that it's sensitive and flecked with emotion, and the crowd responded.
By the time it was over, she had won over scores of new fans, who had joined the old ones in coming to their feet with loud applause.
Jones stepped backstage, a childlike enthusiasm on her face, and sat down to a post-show meal with band members.
A staffer walked into the room. "Someone wants to meet you," she said to Jones.
"Who is it?" the singer said warily.
"It's Chubby Checker."
Jones sprang out from her seat and practically sprinted out of the room.
In the hall, Jones posed for a selfie with Checker. She looked delighted. "This is great," she said. "Chubby Checker!" A moment later, she added, "But it would still be nice to win a Grammy and sell a million records before I go away from here."
