She was called "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll.” She was the inspiration for later performers such as Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Eric Clapton. She was Sister Rosetta Tharpe and was ranked as one of the top 10 best guitar players in history.
Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, opening the way to the rise of electric blues. Her guitar-playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s. Though little remembered, her influence was comprehensive in the realm of modern musical genres which crossed over between gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll.
Tharpe was always surrounded by music growing up. Born Rosetta Nubin in March 1915, in Arkansas to Willis Atkins and Katie Bell, Tharpe came from a family of religious singers, cotton pickers, and traditional evangelists. She picked up the guitar at four years old, and at the age of six, she accompanied her mother to perform with a traveling evangelist troupe in churches around the South. She was considered a musical prodigy.
Tharpe and her mother settled in Chicago by the mid-1920s, where they continued performing spiritual music. As Tharpe grew up, she began fusing Delta blues, New Orleans jazz, and gospel music into what would become her signature style. Female guitarists were rare in the 1920s and 30s, and even more so were musicians who pursued both religious and secular themes, a fact that alarmed the gospel community.
By 1938, she had moved to New York and joined the Cotton Club Revue, a club that became especially notable during the Prohibition era. She was only 23 at the time, a feat that was only amplified when she scored her first single, "Rock Me," a gospel and rock 'n' roll fusion, along with three other gospel songs: "My Man and I," "That's All" and "Lonesome Road."
As a young black woman working within a heavily male-dominated and segregated industry in the 1940s, Tharpe wasn't shy about testing traditional conventions. She collaborated with heavy-hitting artists of the time, like Duke Ellington and the Dixie Hummingbirds. Tharpe teamed up with the Jordanaires, an all-white male group, and began performing for mixed audiences, throwing out Jim Crow norms. But despite her celebrity status in the forties, all restaurants and hotels were still segregated, so Tharpe slept on buses. She went around the back end of restaurants to pick up food because they wouldn't let her in.
After the war, Tharpe started working with Sammy Price and produced a famous spiritual single, "Strange Things Happening Everyday," with Decca Records. The song specifically references what was happening in the mid-1940s: WWII was ending; the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima; Jackie Robinson had just been signed to the major leagues. The expression "strange things" helped to express the uneasiness of the bewildering events going on in the world. It was an immediate hit. It was one of her most well-known records, as well as the first gospel song to cross over into the R&B top 10 charts. Some even argue that it was one of the first rock-n-roll recordings.
Although private about her personal life, Rosetta Tharp was married several times and had both male and female partners. In the 1940s, she met her partner, Marie Knight, when they teamed up with their hit "Up Above My Head." They began touring by themselves (along with their band) and started taking control of their own business decisions. For two lesbian Black women, their efforts were radical at the time.
However, in 1950, she and Knight split up and she married Russell Morrison, her manager. They were married in front of 20,000 people in the Washington Senator’s baseball stadium and an album was made of the event.
As the 50s moved on, other performers became more popular with their experimentation with the musical styles she had been pioneering for several decades. Tharpe took her talents to Europe and began touring in 1957.
While building a new generation of fans, Tharpe delivered what would become one of her most iconic performances, in 1964, singing to a crowd across a train station platform in south Manchester. (see video at the end of this article) As she stepped down a horse-drawn carriage, with a gospel and blues rhythm playing in the background, she bobbed to the platform with a young gentleman on her arm. She kicked off the performance with a gospel tune, "Didn't It Rain."
She continued touring in Europe practically until the end of her life (her last known recording is from 1970 in Copenhagen). She died three years later, in Philadelphia, from a stroke.
Through her unforgettable voice and gospel swing crossover style, Tharpe influenced a generation of musicians including Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, and countless others. Her career, which spanned four decades, was grounded in both her confidence and the characteristic rawness she brought to her performances night after night. She was, and is, an unmatched artist.
A biography of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, entitled "Shout, Sister, Shout!" by Gayle L. Wald, was published in 2007. Tharpe's biographer said that "she influenced Elvis Presley, she influenced Johnny Cash, she influenced Little Richard". When asked about her music and rock and roll, Tharpe is reported to have said, "Oh, these kids and rock and roll — this is just sped up rhythm and blues. I've been doing that forever".
In the 2000s, there has been a resurgence of interest in Tharpe’s work, career, and influence.
In 2007, she was inducted posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame. 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 where she is interned.
In 2011 BBC Four aired a one-hour documentary, Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll, written and directed by UK filmmaker Mick Csaky. In 2013 the film was shown in the US as part of the PBS series American Masters.
On October 5, 2017, Tharpe was listed as a nominee for the 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. On December 13, 2017, she was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early Influence.
In 2017, National Public Radio wrote about the artist's career and concluded with these comments: Tharpe "was a gospel singer at heart who became a celebrity by forging a new path musically... Through her unforgettable voice and gospel swing crossover style, Tharpe influenced a generation of musicians including Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry and countless others... She was, and is, an unmatched artist."
Rolling Stone named Tharpe the 6th greatest guitarist of all time in 2023.
All of this honor and attention is well-deserved, and her name should be remembered forever as the First Black female rock-n-roll artist of the 20th century.
Listen to her 1964 performance in Manchester England.