Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Blues Legend

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Blues  Legend

This has no video but just listen to Sister Rosetta play and sing!!! WOW!!!!!

I’ve included another video below of this monster talent playing electric guitar… (sorry, couldn’t find acoustic).

Here’s Sister’s bio:

“Born in Arkansas in 1915, singer Rosetta Tharpe began performing as a child with her mother. One of the first gospel artists to perform in both churches and secular clubs, she is credited with bringing gospel music into the mainstream in the 1930s and 1940s. She toured until her death in 1973.

Guitarist; gospel singer. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born as Rosetta Nubin on March 20, 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Although the identity of her father is unknown, Tharpe’s mother, Katie Bell Nubin, was a singer, mandolin player and evangelist preacher for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). The COGIC, founded by a black Baptist bishop named Charles Mason in 1894, encouraged musical expression in worship and allowed women to preach. At the encouragement of her mother, Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar from a very young age, and was by all accounts a musical prodigy.

She began performing onstage with her mother from the age of four, playing the guitar and singing “Jesus Is on the Main Line.” By age six, she had joined her mother as a regular performer in a traveling evangelical troupe. Billed as a “singing and guitar playing miracle,” Rosetta Tharpe accompanied her mother in hybrid performances—part sermon, part gospel concert — before audiences all across the American South.

In the mid-1920s, Tharpe and her mother settled down in Chicago, where the duo continued to perform religious concerts at the COGIC church on 40th Street while occasionally traveling to perform at church conventions throughout the country. As a result, Tharpe developed considerable fame as a musical prodigy, standing out in an era when prominent black female guitarists remained very rare; the blues legend Memphis Minnie was the only such performer to enjoy national fame at the time. In 1934, at the age of 19, Rosetta Tharpe married a COGIC preacher named Thomas Thorpe who had accompanied her and her mother on many of their tours. Although the marriage only lasted a short time, she decided to incorporate a version of her first husband’s surname into her stage name, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, which she used for the rest of her career.

In 1938, Tharpe moved to New York City where she signed with Decca Records. On October 31 of that year, she recorded four songs for Decca: “Rock Me,” “That’s All,” “The Man and I,” and “The Lonesome Road.” The first gospel songs ever recorded for Decca, all four became instant hits and established Tharpe as one of the nation’s first commercially successful gospel singer. Then on December 23, 1938, Tharpe performed in John Hammond‘s famous Spirituals to Swing Concert at Carnegie Hall. Her performance was controversial and revolutionary in several respects. Performing gospel music in front of secular audiences and alongside blues and jazz musicians was highly unusual, and within conservative religious circles the mere fact of a woman performing guitar music was frowned upon. Musically, Tharpe’s unique guitar style blended melody-driven urban blues with traditional folk arrangements and incorporated a pulsating swing sound that is one of the first clear precursors of rock and roll.”  read more here