It’s her birthday today. In 2018, Rosetta Tharpe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “Early Influence”. I mean, that’s nice, but it’s decades too late. She should have been in the first “class” of Early Influencers, alongside Robert Johnson. Never mind. She’s there now and her influence has been widely recognized. If you don’t know about her, then that’s entirely on you at this point. Catch up.
Plugging in her guitar was a revolutionary act. She was a gospel singer, and a powerful one, with a throaty voice, and a feeling of “call and response” in everything she did. This was participatory music, meant to work up the crowd. Filling the crowd with the Holy Spirit. Secular or no, rock ‘n roll music came from this well-spring. Rock ‘n roll – or rhythm and blues in its earlier iteration, if you can call it that – also depended on call and response, also wanted to fill the audience with Spirit, although not a Holy one. Rosetta Tharpe’s style had a huge influence on the ones who went on to explode the world as we know it, people like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis. Others who are more well-versed in the terminology have spoken on what it was exactly she did as a guitarist that was so revolutionary (besides plugging in the guitar). She predicts Link Wray. She used distortion deliberately. She pressed into that distortion. Distortion wasn’t a mistake. It was The Sound. This influenced everyone. Muddy Waters. Keith Richards. One of the problems is that all of these guys name-checked her repeatedly: her name was in the air. She might have been left off of lists, but she wasn’t left off of THEIR lists. It just took some time to emanate out into wider popular culture.
It was radio that separated out “genres”. But on the ground, among musicians, it was all about the cross-pollination. Country, gospel, rhythm ‘n blues … everyone influenced everyone. Everyone became everyone. Everyone took from everyone else. This has always been the case in culture – you can’t compartmentalize genres, and then say to artists, “Okay, this little section is untouchable. Don’t be influenced by it.” Gospel – spiritual music – influencing the “devil’s music” – aka rock ‘n roll – is the best example of how culture works, when it’s really working. There will always be those who resist this, or reject it. These people are part of the Past, not the Future. (I am looking at you, established Nashville country music industry, so disturbed by rockabilly that you refused to admit Elvis and/or the Everly Brothers and/or everyone else onto your charts for a good 15 years – thereby relegating yourself to almost obscurity. You refused to allow country artists to be influenced by rhythm ‘n blues – aka “race” music – and so … you Balkanized yourself. It took a couple of outlaws like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to make people outside of your little hermetically sealed world to pay attention again. Finally, you “allowed” Jerry Lee Lewis into your ranks. Charlie Rich. All of these guys, influenced by gospel, rhythm ‘n blues, Rosetta Tharpe … Resisting cross-pollination in an attempt to keep something “pure” is a losing battle.
Rosetta Tharpe was born in 1915, and so she was perfectly positioned by sheer accident to benefit from technological advancements, like the ability to record music, so future generations could hear it. Before things like record players and radio, musicians remained mostly regional phenomenons, although the word could spread, and then you’d have to tour. People needed to see you in person. But Tharpe came up when all that was shifting around. She was born in Arkansas, to musical parents, and very early on was recognized as a prodigy. She was on the road with an evangelical music troupe by the time she was 6, 7 years old. Tharpe always stood out. Female guitarists were rare, and in the gospel world guitarists were even more rare. She was an anomaly, as most revolutionary artists are. She was from another time, a future time, she pointed the way.
In her early 20s, having moved to New York City, she recorded a couple of songs for Decca Records. One of those songs – “Rock Me” – is considered one of THE moments in the history of rock ‘n roll. Recorded in 1938, “Rock Me” went on to influence the guys who influenced everyone else. Little Richard. Elvis. Jerry Lee Lewis. They all heard it and knew it.
Listen to that guitar. LISTEN. It’s 1938.
Her 1944 recording of “Strange Things Happening Every Day” was that rare breed, a gospel crossover hit – the first of its kind – reaching #2 on Billboard’s “race” charts (rhythm ‘n blues).
Baz Luhrmann used this song to stunning effect in Elvis, with the great Yola playing Sister Rosetta.
There are many contenders for the “first rock ‘n roll record”. Ike Turner’s “Rocket 88”, recorded at Sun Studio in 1951, with a damaged amplifier creating the distorted fuzzy sound which would become a hallmark of rock ‘n roll, is often clocked with the title. But Rosetta Tharpe got there before that, 7 years before that, with “Strange Things Happening Every Day.”
I suppose the point is: there isn’t a winner in this kind of thing. “Strange things” were happening in the culture, with radio and records and the war ending and prosperity and kids with money to burn … music was changing all over, it was reflected everywhere, in country, in gospel, in r&b … but this Love of Lists has often meant Tharpe was ignored. Understanding and accepting gospel’s influence on all the secular demons of the ’50s and ’60s is essential.
Similar to a later boundary-crosser like Sam Cooke, Rosetta Tharpe was controversial among the community from which she sprung. There was something unruly in her music, something deemed “inappropriate” by the gospel world, something down-and-dirty, more appropriate for a juke joint on a sweaty Saturday night. (That was one of the difficult things about gospel: the best of it inspired physical frenzies, people fainting and writhing and screaming, not all that different from fainting/writhing/screaming teenagers at an Elvis show. There’s a reason gospel inspired all of those early guys, who grew up singing those songs in church. They knew the feelings it inspired, the falling away of self-consciousness, of civilization itself.) Tharpe was often rejected by her own world, and embraced by the secular white world. The gospel community is very tough on “their” performers. Sister Rosetta performed in nightclubs, in front of jazz orchestras, backed up by people like Cab Calloway. The gospel community was not on board with this at all.
Tharpe was celebrated in her own time. She did not suffer in obscurity. The ’60s showed a resurgence in interest in folk music, with people like Mahalia Jackson surging into importance (eclipsing Tharpe somewhat). But she toured Europe with Muddy Waters (she was a huge influence on him). She died in 1973, and in the following decades her name fell into obscurity. People like Robert Johnson continued to be recognized, but she … she was forgotten. Not among musicians, but the general public had no idea about this essential figure, one of the wellsprings of everything that followed. This changed in the ’90s. A biography came out, which launched a flurry of coverage, NPR segments, documentaries, all of which helped re-connect the broken continuum with our collective past.
Take a moment out of your busy day to watch her work. Let her work ON you. Her music lives.
And this is extraordinary. During her tour of Europe in 1964, she gave a performance at an abandoned railway station in the rain.
You can’t understand the history of 20th century music if you don’t include Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Her name is perfect. She is a living breathing American Rosetta stone.
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