Born
Rosetta Nubin
in
Cotton Plant,
Arkansas, she
began performing at age four, billed as "Little Rosetta
Nubin, the singing and guitar playing miracle",
accompanying her mother,
Church of God in
Christ (COGIC)
evangelist Katie Bell Nubin, who played
mandolin
and preached at tent revivals throughout the South.
Exposed to both
blues
and jazz both in the South and after her family moved to
Chicago
in the
late 1920s, she played blues and jazz in private, while
performing gospel music in public settings. Her unique
style reflected those secular influences: she bent notes
the way that jazz artists did and picked guitar like
Memphis Minnie.
Rosetta
also crossed over to secular music in other ways. After
marrying
COGIC
preacher Thomas Thorpe (from which "Tharpe" is a
misspelling) in 1934 and moving to
New York City,
she recorded four sides with
Decca Records
backed by
"Lucky" Millinder's
jazz orchestra. Her records caused an immediate furor:
many churchgoers were shocked by the mixture of sacred
and secular music, but secular audiences loved them.
Appearances in
John Hammond's
1938 extravaganza "From Spirituals To Swing", at the
Cotton Club
and
Café Society
and
with
Cab Calloway
and
Benny Goodman
made her even more popular. Songs like "This Train" and
"Rock Me", which combined gospel themes with bouncy
up-tempo arrangements, became smash hits among audiences
with little previous exposure to gospel music.
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 also the first gospel
song to make Billboard's "race records" Top
Ten--something that Sister Rosetta Tharpe accomplished
several more times in her career.
After
the war Decca paired her with Marie Knight, a Sanctified
shouter with a strong contralto and a more subdued style
than Tharpe. Their hit "Up
Above My Head"
showed both of them to great advantage: Knight provided
the response to Tharpe in traditional
call and response
format, then took the role that would have been assigned
to a bass in a male quartet after Tharpe's solo. They
toured the gospel circuit for a number of years, during
which Tharpe was so popular that she 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.
Their
popularity took a sudden downturn, however, when they
recorded several blues songs in the early 1950s. Knight
attempted afterwards to cross over to popular music,
while Tharpe remained in the church, but rebuffed by
many of her former fans. Retreating to
Europe,
Tharpe gradually returned to the gospel circuit,
although at nowhere near her former celebrity. In April
- May 1964, at the height of a surge of popular interst
in the blues, she toured the
UK
as part of the "Amercian Folk Blues and Gsopel Caravan",
alongside
Muddy Waters
and
Otis Spann,
Ranson Knowling and Little Willie Smith,
Reverend Gary Davis,
Cousin Joe
and
Sonny Terry
and
Brownie McGhee.
Tharpe was introduced on stage and accompanied on piano
by
Cousin Joe Pleasant.
In
1970 Thrape's performances were curtailed a stroke in
1970, after which she lost the use of her legs. She died
in 1973 after another
stroke,
on the eve of a scheduled recording session. She was
buried in
Northwood Cemetery
in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania in
an unmarked grave.[1]
In 2008, a concert was held to raise funds for a marker
for her grave and January 11 was declared Sister Rosetta
Tharpe Day in Pennsylvania.[2]
Musical Influence
A
number of musicians, ranging from
Elvis Presley
and
Jerry Lee Lewis
to
Isaac Hayes
and
Aretha Franklin,
have identified her—or, more particularly, her singing,
guitar playing and showmanship—as an important influence
on them.
Little Richard
referred to the stomping, shouting Gospel music legend
as his favorite singer when he was a child. In 1945, she
heard Richard sing prior to her concert at the Macon
City Auditorium and later invited him on stage to sing
with her. Following the show, she paid him for his
performance.[3]
Johnny Cash's
daughter
Rosanne
similarly stated in an interview with
Larry King
that Tharpe was her father's favorite singer. She was
held in particularly high esteem by UK jazz/blues singer
George Melly.
Brixton band
Alabama 3
(of Sopranos theme fame) named a track after
Sister Rosetta on their debut album Exile on
Coldharbour Lane. UK indie rock band
The Noisettes
released the single "Sister
Rosetta (Capture the Spirit)"
off their 2007 album What's the Time Mr. Wolf?
Also in 2007, singers
Alison Krauss
and
Robert Plant
recorded a duet version of the song Sister Rosetta
Goes Before Us, written by
Sam Phillips.
Michelle Shocked
opened her live gospel album
ToHeavenURide
(2007) with "Strange Things Happening Every Day", along
with a tribute to Tharpe.
In popular culture
The
2001 film
Le Fabuleux Destin
d'Amélie Poulain
shows the protagonist's house-bound neighbor mesmerized
by a montage of video clips which featured a rousing
performance by Tharpe.
References
Other
sources cited
-
Boyer, Horace Clarence. (1995). How Sweet the
Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel. Elliott and
Clark.
ISBN
0-252-06877-7.
-
Heilbut, Tony.
(1997). The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times.
Limelight Editions.
ISBN
0-87910-034-6.
- Wald,
Gayle. (September 2003). "From Spirituals to Swing:
Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover."
American Quarterly, 55 (3), 387-416.
-
Wald, Gayle. (2007) "Shout, Sister, Shout!: The
Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister
Rosetta Tharpe" Beacon Press.
ISBN
0-80700-984-9.
- White,
Charles. (2003). The Life and Times of Little
Richard: The Authorised Biography. Omnibus
Press. pg. 17.
