Sister Rosetta Tharpe 10/1973 (58) was born Rosetta Nubin, on March 20, 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas from parents who were cotton pickers. Little is known of her father except that he was a singer. Tharpe’s mother Katie was also a singer and a mandolin player, deaconess-missionary, and women’s speaker for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which was founded in 1897 by Charles Harrison Mason, a black Pentecostal bishop, who encouraged rhythmic musical expression, dancing in praise and allowing women to sing and teach in church. Encouraged by her mother, Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar as Little Rosetta Nubin at the age of six and was soon cited as a musical prodigy.Tharpe’s father was not involved in her life; even so, her mother’s influence alone set Tharpe on the path of becoming a performer. Tharpe and her mother continued to perform together throughout the 1930s.
About 1921, at age six, Tharpe had joined her mother as a regular performer in a traveling evangelical troupe. Billed as a “singing and guitar playing miracle,” she accompanied her mother in performances that were part sermon and part gospel concert before audiences across the American South. In the mid-1920s, Tharpe and her mother settled in Chicago, Illinois, where they performed religious concerts at the Roberts Temple COGIC on 40th Street, occasionally traveling to perform at church conventions throughout the country. Tharpe developed considerable fame as a musical prodigy, standing out in an era when prominent black female guitarists were rare. At age 19, she married Thomas Thorpe, a preacher, who accompanied her and her mother on many of their tours. The marriage lasted only a few years, but she decided to adopt a version of her husband’s surname as her stage name, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In 1938, she left her husband and moved with her mother to New York City. Although she married several times, she performed as Rosetta Tharpe for the rest of her life.
Tharpe recorded her first four sides in 1938 during a session that included her first hit, “Rock Me,” along with “That’s All.” She was 23 at the time, just launching her career as gospel’s first real hitmaker, its first crossover artist and first national star. Four years later, Billboard magazine praised her for “the rock-and-roll spiritual singing” in her re-recording of “Rock Me” with the Lucky Millander Orchestra. She toured with Millinder until 1943, recording various hits such as “The Lonesome Road,” “Down By the Riverside,” “Four or Five Times,” “Shout Sister Shout,” and “(I Want a) Tall Skinny Papa.”
Even before that, she had recorded some of her best formative material, including her historic 1938 Carnegie Hall concert From Spirituals To Swing, accompanied by the great boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons. Though echo-drenched and not of the highest quality, these early recordings are considered some of the first rock’n’roll records. “Rock Me”, “That’s All”, “My Man and I” and “The Lonesome Road”, were instant hits, establishing Tharpe as an overnight sensation and one of the first commercially successful gospel recording artists. “Rock Me” influenced many rock-and-roll singers, such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
But performing gospel music for secular nightclub audiences and alongside blues and jazz musicians and dancers was unusual, and in conservative religious circles a woman playing the guitar in such settings was frowned upon. Tharpe fell out of favor with segments of the gospel community. By 1943 she considered rebuilding a strictly gospel act, but she was contractually required to perform more worldly material. Her nightclub performances, in which she would sometimes sing gospel songs amid scantily clad showgirls, caused her to be shunned by some in the gospel community.
During this time masculinity was directly linked to guitar skills. Tharpe was often offered the compliment that she could “play like a man”, demonstrating her skills at guitar battles at the Apollo. Her answer would be: “I’m better than any man.” An absolute truth at that time.
Tharpe continued recording during World War II, one of only two gospel artists able to record V-discs for troops overseas.
Her song “Strange Things Happening Every Day“, recorded in 1944 with Sammy Price, Decca’s house boogie woogie pianist, showcased her virtuosity as a guitarist and her witty lyrics and delivery. It was the first gospel song to appear on the Billboard magazine Harlem Hit Parade. This 1944 record has been called the first rock and roll record. Tharpe toured throughout the 1940s, backed by various gospel quartets, including the Dixie Hummingbirds.
In 1946, Tharpe saw gospel singer Marie Knight perform at a Mahalia Jackson concert in New York. Tharpe recognized a special talent in Knight. Two weeks later, Tharpe showed up at Knight’s doorstep, inviting her to go on the road. They toured the gospel circuit for a number of years, during which they recorded hits such as “Up Above My Head” and “Gospel Train”.
Starting in 1949, their popularity took a sudden downturn. Mahalia Jackson was starting to eclipse Tharpe in popularity, and Knight harbored a desire to break free as a solo act into popular music. Furthermore, around this time, Knight lost her children and mother in a house-fire in Newark, New Jersey. The pair split as a duo in late 1950, though they would periodically reunite on stage and on record, including for the duet “You Gotta Move,” which highlights the gospel call-and-response technique that later emerged in soul music.
That same year, to commemorate Tharpe’s first anniversary of being a homeowner in Richmond, Virginia, Tharpe put on a concert at what is now the Altria Theater. Supporting her for that concert were the Twilight Singers, whom Rosetta adopted as her background singers for future concerts, renaming them The Rosettes.
Tharpe attracted 25,000 paying customers to her wedding to her manager, Russell Morrison (her third marriage), followed by a vocal performance at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., in 1951. Following her gala wedding, Tharpe’s popularity waned when secular rock’n’roll and rhythm’n’blues became the rage.
In 1952, Tharpe and Red Foley recorded the B-side “Have a Little Talk with Jesus”, which is likely the first interracial duet recorded in the US.
In 1956, Tharpe recorded an album with the gospel quartet The Harmonizing Four, titled Gospel Train.
In 1957, Tharpe was booked for a month-long tour of the UK by British trombonist Chris Barber, leading to another career revival when she began touring Europe and playing to audiences who had never experienced the authenticity of gospel and the blues in person. Sister Rosetta became a trailblazer again and became one of the first artists to take those sounds across the Atlantic.
She was joined in subsequent years by Muddy Waters and other American blues giants for package tours that inspired the young Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and others to create the British blues scene that transformed them into the torchbearers of the mid-60s British Invasion. Rosetta’s televised performance of “Didn’t It Rain” and “Trouble In Mind” on the platform of an old Manchester train station became something of a YouTube hit decades later.
People may be starting to appreciate Sister Rosetta Tharpe after all.
In April and May 1964, Tharpe toured Europe as part of the Blues and Gospel Caravan, alongside Muddy Waters and Otis Spann, Ransom Knowling and Little Willie Smith, Reverend Gary Davis, Cousin Joe, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Tharpe was introduced on stage and accompanied on piano by Cousin Joe Pleasant. Under the auspices of George Wein, the Caravan was stage-managed by Joe Boyd. A concert, in the rain, was famously recorded by Granada Television at the disused railway station at Wilbraham Road, Manchester, in May 1964. The band performed on one platform while the audience was seated on the opposite platform.
Her performances were curtailed by a stroke in 1970, after which she lost the use of her legs, amputated as a consequence of complications of diabetes. Rosetta sadly died after a second stroke, on October 9, 1973 in Philadelphia, on the eve of a scheduled recording session.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the first guitar heroine of rock & roll. In May 2018, Tharpe was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence.
Her heartfelt gospel folksiness gave way to her roaring mastery of her trusty Gibson Les Paul Custom, which she wielded on a level that rivaled the best of her male contemporaries.
Although many in later years may not have heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, she is known in rock history as one of the genre’s pioneers. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, with many musicians stating it was overdue. Tharpe was an inspiration to many, and her music was a precursor to the rock and roll music genre.
With its rhythmic nature, Tharpe’s gospel music quickly gained her fans amongst the rhythm and blues audiences. Her music became so popular that many began to call her the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
It wasn’t only because of her exciting blend of gospel and rock and roll that she is considered the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll” in the music industry, but also because of her pioneering guitar technique. By using heavy distortion on her electric guitar, Tharpe managed to bring gospel and spiritual music into the limelight and the mainstream.
Her guitar technique also played a massive role in forming the British blues music genre in the 1960s, and the formation of the electric blues genre.
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe was nicknamed “the original soul sister” and “the godmother of rock and roll.” Tharpe sang and played the guitar often using distortion, thereby playing what came to be called electric or urban blues.
• The United States Postal Service issued a 32-cent commemorative stamp to honor Tharpe on July 15, 1998. In 2007, she was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame.
