Sister Rosetta Tharpe — the Aretha, David Bowie, and Prince of her time
Women in Rock series - Profile of a Woman Rock Star
Welcome, everyone, to a post in the Women in Rock series.
Today we’re focusing on a woman who’s been called the Godmother of Rock and Roll, but who I’m going to show was the Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, and Prince of her time all rolled into one.
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I’ve already written numerous posts about women in rock ’n’ roll since starting this substack a little over a year ago, available in my Women in Rock section
Carole King, as well as some women rockers here on Substack, appear in the Creators section
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Why isn’t this woman a legend?
Had she been born under different circumstances, I suspect that Sister Rosetta Tharpe would be a legend and a household name.
When I first heard her name, my response was “Who? Is she another one of those singing nuns?”
I wasn’t sure I even wanted to cover her, but several readers asked me to include her in this series, including my ‘women in rock’ compadre over at Zapato’s Jam, Charles in San Francisco, who’s written two excellent posts on her.
“Well, OK,” I responded without enthusiasm.
Then I read Gayle F. Wald’s biography, Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe,1 based on over 150 interviews and correspondences with people who knew Rosetta personally, and my attitude shifted to “How do I tell the story of this extraordinary being and do her justice?”.
Because, in my opinion, Rosetta was out of this world. I mean that both figuratively and literally. She was a gift from God.
Before you read, watch the video below. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has done a stellar job of summarizing in only six minutes why Rosetta was the very first rock star — and why they inducted her in 2018.
I’m not going to review her life or her discography. Others have already done an excellent job of that, here on Substack and in many videos on YouTube.
If that’s something you desire, I highly recommend heading over to Zapato’s Jam and reading Part 1 and Part 2 of Charles’ brief but excellent overview of Rosetta’s role in the birth and direction of rock and roll.
What I’m going to focus on here is why she was extraordinary, and what her story tells us about how to be successful in music, based on the highly reliable first-person research with people who knew and worked with Rosetta directly conducted by Gayle Wald.
But even more importantly, I think Rosetta role models ways to be successful in an environment where you have to break new ground — in her case, deal with a segregated country and a male-dominated industry — to do what you want to do and be what you want to be.
In other words, how to be a musical pioneer, or at least hold your own, in an unsupportive and sometimes hostile world, something that seems highly relevant to our conflict-ridden and challenging times.
I believe that what she has to teach us are quite powerful lessons for living a rich and meaningful life.
Like, wowza, she did all that?
Let’s start by reviewing why she was so extraordinary. Here’s a summary of what I view to be her most striking accomplishments, from Gayle Wald’s book and elsewhere, but if you read Wald’s book you’ll find that there are actually plenty more:
She was an in-demand musical performer and entertainer for over half a century (1919-1973)
The first gospel artist to become known nationally
Transitioned from her first career as a gospel star singing in black churches and tent meetings around the U.S. to a popular star performing in New York in front of both white and black audiences at the prestigious Cotton Club, Apollo Theater, Café Society, and Carnegie Hall
The first gospel artist to cross over into popular music
Performed with the Count Basie Band, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong and, according to pianist Bill Doggett, “doing the spiritual type of thing, and playing her guitar was new to show business” and earned her the name “the swinger of spirituals”2
Wrote and performed her own songs and had a number of popular hits, including “Rock Me,” “God Don’t Like It,” “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” and “Up Above My Head, I Hear Music in the Air”
“Incorporated elements of gospel, blues, jazz, popular ballads, country, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll” and “helped innovate ‘soul’ through her own experiments in bridging worlds of sound”3
A guitar virtuoso who elevated that instrument by giving it a prominent role and a voice that it hadn’t had in gospel or popular music, through introducing a new style that involved hotdogging, finger-picking, and giving it a personality
Penned and performed a crossover gospel-cum-R&B hit making fun of religious hypocrisy, “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” that many consider to be the first rock-and-roll song
One of the few religious artists who appeared on Armed Forces Radio Services’ all-black variety show and had 78s of her songs manufactured and shipped overseas to the troops during WW2
The very first stadium rocker with her wedding performance at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. in front of an estimated 15 to 22 thousand people in 1951
Someone who broke new ground in racial integration in the U.S. in at least three ways:
The first black gospel musician of her stature to tour with an all-white male quartet — namely, the Jordanaires, who would later back up Elvis
The first black woman to record a duet with a white country star (Red Foley in 1952)
The first black performer at the opening of the first white club in Kansas City to allow black performers and patrons, the Dixie Manor
The innovator of the first tour bus retrofitted to musicians’ needs and with advertising along the side (I suspect this to be true after researching the topic and finding no one else before her - see below)
Performed in national TV appearances from 1950, including appearing on the Perry Como Supper Club show and serving as the host of Gospel Time twice
Toured the U.S., UK, and Europe countless times, and in the process collaborated with and influenced many artists across genres, including folk, blues, jazz, swing, and rock
Played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964, on the bill with artists who included Louis Armstrong and His All Stars, Count Basie Orchestra, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Sarah Vaughan, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto, Mose Allison, Thelonious Monk, and Joe Williams
Played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, on the bill with Muddy Waters, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, The Chambers Brothers, Arlo Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, Janis Ian, Mimi Fariña, Buffy Sainte-Marie, The Staple Singers, Maybelle Carter, The Incredible String Band, Jean Ritchie, Gordon Lightfoot, Theodore Bikel, Dave Dudley, Merle Travis, and Grandpa Jones
Nominated for a Grammy for Best Gospel Soul Performance for a collection of her popular material in the LP Precious Memories
On a U.S. postage stamp in 1998 (below)
Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2007 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 as an Early Influence
Named the 6th greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023.
You might be thinking, “Hey, I’m not convinced about her being the ‘Godmother of Rock-and-Roll.’” To which I say, “OK, dude, let’s look at some of the artists Rosetta directly influenced, which might just do the trick”:
Elvis Presley adored Rosetta’s singing and guitar picking and included her “Up Above My Head” in a gospel medley on his 1968 Comeback Special
Johnny Cash said in his autobiography that he listened to her song “Strange Things Happening Every Day” over and over again and claimed seeing her in concert to be “one of the most moving musical experiences of his life,” with Rosanne Cash surmising that Rosetta was her dad’s favorite artist4
An unknown Jerry Lee Lewis was influenced by her style of piano playing and sang her “Strange Things” at his audition for Sun Records
Little Richard imitated her singing style
Chuck Berry got a lot of his moves, including the duck walk, from her
Rockabilly great and rock ’n’ roll pioneer Carl Perkins said “Strange Things” was one of his favorite songs and his dad’s favorite
Both Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner referred to her as an influence
Isaac Hayes said her guitar playing influenced his musical sensibility
Ginger Baker, before his time in Cream and Blind Faith, toured Scandinavia with Rosetta as part of the Diz Disley band, and said “I was her favorite… and she used to give me huge smiles on stage, especially during her show stopper ‘Didn’t It Rain.’ I loved her.’”5 (see another fun and outrageous anecdote from Ginger below)
The Moody Blues, according to drummer Graeme Edge, listened to original rock ’n’ roll and then discovered even earlier iconic American music, including Sister Rosetta, and “Then we repackaged it and sold it back in a very free approach.”6
Folk star Odetta said of Rosetta, “She is part of that history that was so valuable and is so valuable to young blacks as we were coming along… She is certainly a champion where the guitar is concerned. My playing was a fair rhythm guitar, but that woman could play the guitar.”7
More recently, rap star Lizzo said “I talk about Rosetta Tharpe all the time. She… invented rock and roll.”8
But maybe to be thoroughly convinced you need to hear from Rosetta herself, that she was doing rock ’n’ roll all along and that it’s just a faster, happier, and more theatrical expression of gospel:
In 1957 she told the Daily Mirror, “All this new stuff they call rock ‘n’ roll, why, I’ve been playing that for years now.”9
As she explained, “Blues is just the theatrical name for gospel… and true gospel should be slow, like we start off with ‘Amazin’ Grace’… then you clap your hands a little and that’s ‘jubilee’ or revival’… and then you get a little happier and that’s jazz … and then you make it like rock ‘n’ roll.”10
If you need any more convincing, read the book. That’ll do it.
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Hide it under a bushel - NO!
I'm gonna let it shine…
Don't let Satan blow it out
I'm gonna let it shine…
Let it shine til Jesus comes
I'm gonna let it shine
Not only did she write and sing those words, but she lived them. She let her ‘little light’ shine throughout her life.
There is much to learn in looking at how she managed to do that during a tumultous time in world history, especially for someone born a poor black woman in the Deep South who lived and performed — and remained a musical force — through the Great Depression, World War 2, the Civil Rights Movement, and the tumult of the sixties.
She had a higher purpose
With two musical parents until the age of six11, Rosetta started learning how to play at age three and by six was a captivating soloist who could accompany herself on organ and guitar.
Her gift — she was called a “special child” from a young age — enabled her mother, known as Katie Bell, to leave the South and earn a living as a traveling preacher and missionary for God on the “gospel highway” of the U.S.
Raised in the church, Rosetta developed a deep religious faith, a belief that her talent had been given to her for a purpose, and a conviction that being a musician was a way of glorifiying God, spreading the Gospel, and doing God’s work in the world.
She later defended her decision to perform in secular venues, something that was viewed as anathema by the straitlaced gospel community, by saying “that her mission is to save souls, and she sings in a night club because she feels there are more souls to save in the niteries that need saving than there are in the church.”12
What gave me a chuckle was jazz and blues singer George Melly, who toured with her, noting “the outrageous way she managed to plug her recordings in the same breath as the love of Jesus.”13
An emissary of love, life, and laughter
Although her mother was reportedly strict, Rosetta was described as forever playful, fun, melodramatic, and even outrageous, using humor, pranks, and performance to encourage laughter, joy, affection, and love in others. She even told audiences that she loved them.
As one congregant recalled, “I couldn’t even describe it, but she had a bright smile, alive.”14
This was another characteristic that defined her, an ever-ready smile. As we see below, this was not just a personality trait but also a strategy that stood her in good stead throughout her career, especially in dicey and difficult circumstances.
In one telling anecdote, as she was stepping down from a train in Copenhagen to accept a bouquet of flowers from a little girl, she fell through and disappeared under the train with only her head and shoulders still showing. According to witnesses, she never stopped smiling despite the mishap and having banged up her shins.
Rosetta and her mother became devoted members of a church in Chicago known for aspiration, striving, and self-development, and over their years on the Gospel Highway performing in a wide range of contexts and in front of all manner and size of audiences, Rosetta developed into a confident, self-assured, and captivating performer who knew how to front a band and work a room, and eventually a club, concert hall, and stadium.
During her performances at Harlem’s famous Savoy Ballroom, people reportedly “went wild… Everybody loved Sister. Because she knew how to mingle with people, and she just had that, the charisma.”15
No doubt it was also because Rosetta expressed an understanding and depth of feeling about what she was singing from a young age and throughout her life. She imbued her songs with meaning.
But perhaps it’s also signficant that she positioned herself as a bringer of hope, comfort, and joy and resisted many attempts to get her to sing the blues. As gospel star Mahalia Jackson noted, gospel songs were vehicles for hope whereas the blues were expressions of existential despair.
No wonder then that Rosetta grew even bigger audiences during WW2 when anxiety was on the rise, by putting out a lush and fun big band version of her song “Rock Me” in 1941.
Being an uplifting emissary of the Lord never stopped during her time on this earth, her voice, playing, and smile reportedly not noticeably dimmed even after she had a stroke and one of her legs had to be amputated three years before her death.
Glam to the max
Although considered ordinary in appearance, Rosetta was always immaculately dressed and went full glam even in her gospel days, dressing in sequined gowns and wigs or wildly variable hair colors — blonde, red, dark — well before others in gospel and other genres were doing so.
She also wore pants (trousers) before they became a norm for women, and even wore mink out of season and contrary to the vibe at the Newport Folk Festival.
Rosetta was her own person and an entertainer through and through. In another era we could easily see her being a flapper, goth, punk, or drag queen — and the leader of the pack.
The question we have to ask is, did she influence Liberace, glam rockers like Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and country stars like Dolly Parton?
Rockin’ and rollin’ that guitar
Although guitar accompaniment was not new, she made it into a feature of her performance and “an indelible element of her image,”16 her performances billed as “the spiritual rockin’ rhythm singing of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Her Guitar.”17
“In the post-war period, Rosetta was the only ‘hot’ guitarist in the gospel world, not merely the only woman guitarist.”18
She did it her own way, using the open tuning of Delta musicians and standing while she played, which was not done in gospel. According to R&B legend Etta James, “‘I realized that she played guitar kind of like T-Bone Walker, in a real ‘bad’ groove.’”19
Her guitar playing was described as electrifying and thrilling — “the hairs on the back of your neck stand up”20 — and a revelation to those who witnessed it and those who followed in her footsteps. She did runs, sequences, and arpeggios, and who knew that the guitar could be played behind one’s back or while sitting or lying on the floor as part of a performance until she did it?
Rosetta also innovated the duckwalk and other hot dog moves put to dramatic effect by Chuck Berry and other early rockers, as well as using her highly polished guitar to flash lights around the audience.
Combining this guitar virtuosity with her wide singing range developed in a Pentecostal church where soloists belted it out in order “to project over the cacophony of shouting, crying, and singing worshippers,” and developing a style that “emphasized the picking of individual notes as a counterpoint to her voice”21, as well as a notable flair for stage patter, she became known for having “an exceptional stage presence.”22
She was, in a word, an innovator, and an early adopter and proponent of touring and recording with an electric guitar and amps. And she knew her guitars, in the sixties touring with a white Les Paul Custom that became popular with rockers. (Visible in the photos and videos).
This elevation of the guitar to a starring instrument and one that could ‘make’ the performance had an indelible influence on the early rock-and-rollers in the U.S. — Carl Perkins, Little Richard, Elvis — as well as an entire generation of blues rockers in Britain after Rosetta toured there in the late 50s and early 60s.
A demanding perfectionist like Aretha, Barbra, Madonna
Like other women superstars, Rosetta wanted excellence and worked to get it. Her touring partner for years, Marie Knight, said that rather than resting on her laurels, Rosetta would keep her up many a night practicing and playing her guitar.
When Rosetta recruited the Twilights gospel group to tour with her, dubbing them the Angelic Queens Choir, she rehearsed them constantly, sometimes for two to three days straight, in order to get the harmony just right.
She also “insisted that their outfits, like their voices, blend with hers, and she was as exacting as a ballet mistress when it came to their routines. ‘She’d set aside an hour just for one hand movement,’ recalls Sarah. As ‘her girls,’ moreover, the Angelics had to be dressed just so, and not repeat outfits too often.”23
Like Aretha, Rosetta came to recording sessions knowing exactly what she wanted to do. As one of her producers, Teacho Wiltshire, noted, “I didn’t pick any of her songs. Didn’t ask her anything… We just talked, got acquainted with each other, and she came in and recorded… I didn’t produce her, per se. I allowed her, I guess you might say, to sing her great stuff and I recorded it.”24
Despite her exacting nature, Rosetta was not a dragon in the studio. Quite the opposite, according to one of her musical collaborators. “She made sure that you understood exactly what she wanted… and the moment she explained it and showed you, then she’d make a joke of it, in other words she would make it fun.”25
A helping hand to others
Like Bowie and Prince, she was secure in her talent and gave a helping hand to other artists coming up behind her.
In 1945, she called the unknown Little Richard out of the audience to sing with her and then paid him afterwards, more money than he’d seen in his life up to that point.
With the young women members of the Angelics, she paid them well and acted like a mother hen, not drinking or cursing around them, chaperoning them everywhere, and protecting them from unwelcome intrusions and advances.
She was also known for opening her pockets to down-and-out fans, often to her own detriment.
“Didn’t it rain, children?”
Into every life some rain must fall, as the saying goes, and Rosetta was no exception to that rule.
In fact, she sang about it in this clip from her tour of the UK in 1964 — where you can see all of the character traits we’ve just discussed (and her white Les Paul!) on full display:
Rosetta’s challenges were no small potatoes, being those of a woman, and a black women no less, trying to make it in what was a Wild West of an industry and a segregated society during what were some of the most challenging political, economic, and social times of the 20th century.
Breaking the ‘sacred’ rules
“In the fall of 1938,” as Gayle Wald wrote for Rosetta’s posthumous Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, “when she stepped out onto the storied stage of the Cotton Club, Rosetta Tharpe did what no performer sprung from the rich musical traditions of black Pentecostalism had ever previously dared, or perhaps even imagined. She presented the music of her church to a predominantly white audience in search of Saturday-night diversion, not Sunday-morning deliverance. Within weeks, audience enthusiasm for the ‘hymn-swinging,’ guitar-slinging ‘evangelist’ had earned her second billing to headliner Cab Calloway. Notable engagements at other legendary New York venues — the Paramount (with Count Basie), the Apollo (with Fats Waller, Lionel Hampton, and others), and Carnegie Hall (at the historic ‘From Spirituals to Swing’ concert) — quickly followed.”26
What this paean to Rosetta doesn’t reveal, but is spelled out in Wald’s book, is that Rosetta paid a heavy price for this ‘betrayal’ because gospel singers were expected to confine themselves to the church. The entertainment world was considered profane and unclean.
Rosetta in effect threw out the rulebook, and straddled the two worlds of the sacred and the profane, taking hymns and religious songs into the secular world and bringing Broadway entertainment values into the gospel world.
What gave her the temerity to do this?
One explanation may be the influence of the specific Pentecostal church to which she and her mother belonged, the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which gave sacred music a wide definition that embraced hymns and spirituals to ragtime and blues, and where adherents were encouraged to make a joyful noise unto the Lord through speaking in tongues, boisterous singing, exuberant dancing, clapping, stamping, and shouting, and playing all manner of instruments, including handmade guitars.
This was not the more rigid and righteous environment of the mainstream black churches.
Another possible explanation is her discovery that her preacher husband was cheating on her, which “shattered” her and spurred her to leave the church for ‘greener’ secular pastures.
Those pastures were, indeed, greener in more ways than one, a third reason why she may have absconded to the secular world. The Cotton Club was a venue where prosperous white audiences, including many of the political and cultural elite, could see performances by the corresponding elite of black talent. Said talent flocked to perform, despite the racial segregation practiced by the Club, because they were paid handsomely and because they became famous and grew their audiences through its national and international radio broadcasts.
As a result of this taboo decision to go ‘profane,’ Rosetta went from touring the Gospel Highway to, in short order, procuring a talent manager, securing a publishing contract, and beginning a highly successful and almost two decades long recording relationship with Decca.
Her first 78s were instant hits, and she achieved another first when a deluxe boxed album of four hit 78s, not normally done for black artists, was put out just for her.
Getting on the profane train
Rosetta never forgot her roots and continued to tour the gospel circuit in the years to come, her preacher mother, Katie Bell, often accompanying her.
She had a reputation as “a generally vivacious woman, alternately pious and bawdy, who occasionally had a drink, often flirted, and generally enjoyed being the life of a party.”27 But it went much further than that, as Rosetta violated conventional church rules in three key areas — profanity, sex, and divorce.
According to gospel scholar Tony Heilbrut, “Rosetta belonged to the Whosoever Will Church, as in Whosoever Will Let Him (or Her) Come.”28 Others have said that Rosetta was in a relationship with Marie Knight, had a threesome with Marie and Prophetess Dolly Lewis, and actively pursued affairs with both women and men.
A young Ginger Baker encountered Rosetta’s good-natured flirting when they first met at a rehearsal. As he tells it, “She said, Hey honey, I love your hair color. What dye do you use? Her hair was bright red. When I told her it was natural she said, You’ll have to drop your pants to prove it!”
Rosetta was not unusual in this regard. Contrary to what one would expect, the gospel circuit in that era was not unlike its jazz and pop counterparts, being a hotbed of illicit relations of all kinds, including threesomes and orgies. Ray Charles and Billy Preston both referred to it as a “a sex circus.”29 Per Etta James, “Who wants to admit that you’re praising the Lord at the eight p.m. service and servicing some drop-dead gorgeous hunk of a singer an hour later?… I wouldn’t use the expression sexually active, I’d say sexually overactive.”30 It’s the reason why Aretha Franklin, who traveled that circuit with her preacher father, had two children by the time she turned 15,31 and “it was understood to be off-limits as a subject of inquiry by the Negro press.”32
It might also be the reason that Rosetta spoke out publicly about venereal disease, doing a public service announcement on radio. It was another first — something that women, Christians, and blacks, except Rosetta, were not willing to do at that time.
Navigating the shoals of a male-dominated world
As a gospel singer, Rosetta had to know how to “assert herself musically without undermining a male preacher’s authority”33
Mastering this as well as being a natural cut-up stood her in good stead throughout her career as a performer. “She had the studio laughing. I mean, engineers laughing, everybody laughing that was around her. She had a good attitude about everything, and a good spirit.”34 She reminded one musician of Dolly Parton in this regard.
She was likewise adept at putting on a ‘smile for the cameras’ and giving reporters what they were looking for.
Despite such savvy, she was also known for engaging in good-natured competition with men, playing riffs back at fellow guitarists, beating them in guitar battles at the Apollo Theater, and trying to land bigger catches when fishing with them.
And, not surprisingly, she did have to contend with men finding her “bossy” when she hired them and then used her professional authority to tell them what she wanted. Taking ‘orders’ from a man was acceptable but not from a woman.
She was also, undeniably, a woman of her time and “placed a premium on male ‘protection… [and] attached importance to being someone’s wife, even as she pursued a career that made traditional domesticity impossible.”35
We need to note here that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was not passed in the U.S. until 1974. Before this, women could be, and often were, required by financial institutions to have a male co-signer, typically a husband or father, in order to open a bank account or secure a loan even if they had steady income or were the actual breadwinner. Rosetta was likely to have viewed a husband as a financial necessity given that her father was out of the picture from age six.
She wed three times, and all three husbands brought significant problems to her door.
As we’ll find with Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner, Rosetta’s first husband, Thomas J. Tharpe, an itinerant preacher, was someone who benefitted from her musical ability and for whom she became a professional asset by attracting crowds, but who also beat her and had women on the side.
Her second husband, Foch Pershing Allen, a promoter, also appeared to have little interest other than in the professional value she could provide.
She signed a contract to marry a third husband in a sensational event in a baseball stadium in Washington, DC in summer 1951, not knowing at the time whom she would decide to marry and only having seven months in which to find him.
This third husband, Russell Morrison, insisted on becoming her “manager,” living off her and “spending her into the ground”36, in 1957 losing their house by not keeping up with the mortgage payments.
Rosetta placed her trust in her attorney and husband, and despite working literally all of the time, failed to get ahead financially and was never able to retire even after she had a leg amputated because of diabetes. Such stories are, unfortunately, not all that uncommon among musicians and other performers.
Dealing with racial segregation and discrimination
Rosetta and her touring companion Marie Knight developed concrete tactics to deal with the racism they encountered on the road, including cruelty and disrespect from white women who assumed they were ho’s, as well as ministers who hit on them.
Her motto, according to one of the Angelics, was “Keep a smile on your face and your big mouth shut.”37
But she also wouldn’t let them be disrespected. When CBS wanted Rosetta and the Rosettes to wear bandannas as part of a hayride set they’d constructed, Rosetta threatened to walk out rather than allow this stereotype and demeaning of black people on national TV and in front of a white-only live audience. CBS gave in and they wore their own outfits.
One of the biggest challenges for black performers in that era was traveling in the south and finding no accommodations for black folks, with funeral homes often serving as a last resort. Rosetta was one of the, if not the, earliest adopters of the tour bus as a way to ensure always having a place to stay.
Indeed, she may have been the first to have a ‘modern’ tour bus that catered to the musician lifestyle. In 1949, she bought a bus retrofitted with seats for riding and sleeping in the front and a dressing area with mirrors and closets for each person in the rear. Down the length of the outside of the bus it said “ROSETTA THARPE—DECCA RECORDING ARTIST.”38
Further to that, she hired a white driver, a complete reversal of the usual state of affairs where blacks chaffeured whites. She did this for pragmatic reasons, so that he could procure food and amenities from white-only establishments that she and her traveling companions were not allowed to enter. For blacks, the only available place to eat often turned out to be the back of a Greyhound Bus Station.
She was one smart cookie.
Zagging when zigging no longer works
Rosetta never did completely overcome the prejudice of gospel fans against artists like her ‘selling out’ and recording secular music or performing in ‘profane’ venues.
The situation worsened when she was encouraged to record the blues because it would ‘make her rich’ and finally agreed in 1954. Those blues songs were heavily promoted but failed to sell well, not only annoying her gospel audience even further but also conflicting with her musical reputation and emotional style as an upbeat and uplifting gospel star.
If she had persisted down that road, some believed that she could have followed in Ray Charles’ footsteps and become very wealthy, but her own view was that “Maybe one or two minutes you’re out there, but then you’re gone.” She was committed to gospel even if the gospel world wasn’t always committed to her and at this time was all but abandoning her.
She also found herself being overshadowed by the new rock and roll acts like Elvis, male artists who were, literally, copying and popularizing her guitar virtuosity and her signature moves.
To her great credit, Rosetta was not only an innovator but also an agile shapeshifter. When one door slammed in her face, she simply turned and walked through any other doors that were opened to her. She didn’t keep banging in vain on the same old door.
Fortuitously, or perhaps through divine intervention, a whole bunch of other doors suddenly and unexpectedly swung open.
Rosetta found acceptance and even acclaim among the jazz cognoscenti. The Village Vanguard in New York showcased her and Variety lauded her performance.
She also found herself able to realize a long-held desire to tour Europe that had heretofore been prevented by cross-country union issues. “Not long before the British invasion of 1960s rock and roll, Britain was about to experience its very own Rosetta Invasion.”39 She proceeded to go back and forth to the UK and continental Europe and toured many times, including performing as part of the American Folk, Blues, and Gospel Caravan in 1964 with Muddy Waters (below) and other artists.
Across the pond, she and other American black performers found completely the opposite treatment from what they were used to in the U.S., enjoying the best hotels, food, and transport and the most prestigious venues. They were idolized, given gifts, and invited to people’s homes.
The folk music world took note of this British blues revival and went through its own revival of black roots music around this time. Alan Lomax had given Rosetta folk credentials with his liner notes for her Blessed Assurance album in 1951, opening the door to her becoming an honored and in-demand performer as part of this folk revival.
Because of these jazz, blues, and folk doors opening, Rosetta spent a lot of the sixties on the festival circuit, performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964 and other jazz festivals, the Newport Folk Festival in 1967, as the featured female act at the 1970 American Folk Blues Festival, and at the Soul at the Center festival at Lincoln Center in 1972.
If she hadn’t passed away the following year, in 1973, at the relatively young age of 58, there’s no telling what this irrepressible and trailblazing woman would have done. Maybe prog rock or metal? Disco? Punk or grunge? Hip-hop and rap?
The Aretha, David Bowie, and Prince of her time
I hope I’ve shown that Rosetta had the gospel roots, cross-genre success, emotional fervor, and unyielding perfectionism of Aretha Franklin, the perpetually shapeshifting, innovating, and glamming-it-up style of David Bowie, and the guitar chops, hotdoggery, and songwriting panache of Prince.
For my money, had she lived into the crazy eighties, I believe that she would have given Madonna and Michael Jackson a serious run for their money.
A karmic blessing:
May what you say and do, and what you support, promote, and wish upon others, arrive at your very own door and bless you in return
Gayle F. Wald. Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Beacon Press. 2007. This is my primary source for this post, and most quotes are taken from this source.
Ibid, p. 54 and 50.
Ibid, pp. xii and xv.
Ibid, p. 70
Ibid, p. 173.
Ibid, p. 186.
Ibid, p. 221.
Ibid, p. 224.
Ibid, p. 184.
Ibid, p. 178.
At which time she and her mother left.
Ibid, p. 53.
Ibid, p. 172.
Ibid, p. 21.
Ibid, p. 58.
Ibid, p. 39.
Ibid, p. 61.
Ibid, p. 126.
Ibid, p. 154.
Ibid, p. 174.
Ibid, p. 27.
Ibid, p. 121.
Ibid, p. 101.
Ibid, p. 182.
Ibid, p. 183.
Gayle F. Wald, Hall of Fame Essay, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 33rd Annual Induction Ceremony, April 14, 2018.
Ibid, p. 162.
Ibid, p. 89.
David Ritz. Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin. Back Bay Books. 2014. p. 46.
Ibid, p. 48.
Ibid, p. 61.
Wald, Shout Sister Shout!, p. 90.
Ibid, p. 27.
Ibid, p. 131.
Ibid, p. 114.
Ibid, p. 149.
Ibid, p. 101.
Ibid, pp. 103-104.
Ibid, p. 150.
Great piece Ellen! Sister Rosetta has always been one of those "if you know, you know" artists. She's not a household name, but people who are serious about music often know who she is, especially guitar players. I remember her being discussed in several issues of Guitar World when I was coming up because as you showed here, her style was a lot more influential than most people realize.
Ellen! I dropped everything when my phone chimed and it said you had published this! Great job giving context and some texture to Sister Rosetta's story. There were some anecdotes and bits of her timeline I didn't know about, so kudos to you for doing the digging.
The accounts of what Black artists had to endure, even when they were stars, are infuriating. I loved one reporter's account of the delighted shock Sister Rosetta and her entourage experienced in Europe, when the found the hotels, trains and restaurants were not segregated.
So much here, thank you for publishing this!