Sister Rosetta Tharpe
The holy godmother of rock and roll
Alex Q. Arbuckle
1915-1973
Born to Arkansas cotton pickers in 1915, Rosetta Nubin first began singing and playing guitar at the age of four. Soon she was playing in a traveling evangelical troupe alongside her mother and being hailed as nothing short of miraculous.Rosetta moved to Chicago with her mother and gained significant fame for her rhythmic gospel performances. After a brief marriage to a preacher named Thomas Thorpe, she adopted the stage name Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She was married several times in her life, but was believed by close friends to be lesbian or bisexual.In 1938, she moved to New York and recorded four of her gospel songs for the first time, with the backing of Lucky Millinder’s orchestra. They were instantly successful. Her melding of religious lyrics with lively, rollicking music was unheard of, and alienated some conservative listeners while attracting secular audiences.
On Dec. 23, 1938, she performed in a “Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall, presenting her pious yet raucous gospel alongside blues and jazz musicians and dancers.While her concerts in nightclubs were considered scandalous to some in the gospel community, she was a stunning performer, and was an early influence on artists such as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley.In 1944, she recorded “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” a traditional African-American spiritual augmented with her vocals and electric guitar playing. It is considered to be among the very first rock and roll recordings.She continued to tour in the United States and Europe, shredding guitar solos in front of a clapping choir until her death in 1973 at the age of 58.
All this new stuff they call rock ’n’ roll, why, I’ve been playing that for years now…. Ninety percent of rock-and-roll artists came out of the church, their foundation is the church. - Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 1957
The fellows would look at her, and I don’t know whether there was envy or what, but sometimes she would play rings around them. She was the only lady I know that would pick a guitar and the men would stand back. - Inez Andrews
