In 1969, Mary Jane Jones, a 27-year-old single mother in Petersburg, Virginia with a big, spectacular voice for gospel, was tricked – by a small-time James Brown impersonator – into traveling to Florida, where he threatened and bullied her into giving a series of performances that he sold to the black public in then-segregated cities as appearances by the Queen of Soul herself (who was the same age). Then Aretha, who was singing in Miami, found out – and so began a strange series of events that ended up with Jones performing (as herself) with Duke Ellington.