Sister rosetta tharpe biography american masters
AMERICAN MASTERS: Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother Of Rock & Roll
AMERICAN MASTERS opened its 27th season with the story of African-American gospel singer and guitar virtuoso Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973).
One of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Tharpe may not be a household name today, but the flamboyant superstar, with her spectacular playing on the newly electrified guitar, played a pivotal role in the creation of rock ’n’ roll.
Emmy®-winning filmmaker Mick Csáky uncovers her life, music and lasting influence in AMERICAN MASTERS "Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock & Roll."
Southern-born, Chicago-raised and New York-made, Sister Rosetta rose from poverty to become one of the world’s most popular gospel singers and the first to cross over successfully into mainstream popular music. She introduced the spiritual passion of gospel into the secular world of rock ’n’ roll, inspiring some of its greatest stars, including Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard.
A natural-born performer and a rebel, “She could play the guitar like nobody else … nobody!” says Lottie Henry, a member of Tharpe’s back-up vocal group The Rosettes. “Elvis loved Rosetta Tharpe,” attests Gordon Stoker of The Jordanaires, who performed with both Sister Rosetta and Elvis. “Not only did he dig her guitar playing but he dug her singing too.”
The child of poor cotton pickers, Sister Rosetta was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. At the age of six, she was taken by her evangelist mother Katie Bell to Chicago to join the Church of God in Christ, where she developed her distinctive performing style.
In 1938, at the age of 23, she briefly left the church for show business, causing huge controversy when she performed songs laden with sexual innuendo in New York City venues such as the famed Cotton Club and Café Society, where she immediately became a favorite of both Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Tharpe began her musical pursuits in the church. She experimented with various genres including rhythm and blues and rock and roll
She was exceedingly skilled at playing the electric guitar, asserting her mastery as a woman guitarist
Tharpe has been dubbed the “Godmother of Rock and Roll”. Musicians such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton and Little Richard have cited her as an influence
“Can’t no man play like me. I play better than a man.” Sister Rosetta Tharpe, n.d.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born Rosie Etta Atkins in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Both of Tharpe’s parents, Katie Bell Nubin and Willis Atkins, were singers. Katie Bell also played the mandolin. Tharpe’s father was not involved in her life; even so, her mother’s influence alone set Tharpe on the path of becoming a performer. Alongside her work as a cotton picker, Katie Bell was also a deaconess-missionary and a women's speaker for the Church of God in Christ. This made the church “radical for its encouragement of rhythmic musical experimentation …, as well as allowing women, such as Sister Rosetta’s mother, Katie Bell Nubin, to preach and sing in church,” (Mazique 2019). Though Tharpe was shy, her involvement in the church gave her the opportunity to both sing and play guitar for audiences from as early as age four.
In 1921, Tharpe and her mother moved to the South Side of Chicago for a change of scenery. Once she turned six, the mother-daughter duo began to tour with an evangelist troupe that performed throughout various locations in the South. As she grew older, Tharpe recognized that the more attention her performances garnered, the more of a chance she had to spread her talent, particularly in her favorite genres: gospel, jazz, and blues. While still involved with the Church of God in Christ, she soon realized that Christian ideals denounced jazz and blues. Though the church was often progressive, she was still taught to look
Born to Willis (Willie) B. Atkins, a farm laborer, and Katie Bell Nubin on a farm outside of Cotton Plant in Arkansas on March 20, 1915, Rosetta Tharpe began walking and talking before her first birthday and was musically gifted from an early age. Her father played the guitar and harmonica, and her mother, a beloved member of her church community and referred to as Mother Bell, played the piano and mandolin. Both of her parents taught Tharpe to sing, and she started playing the guitar by age three.
While little else is known of her father, Tharpe's mother left him in 1921 to be a traveling evangelist and took six-year-old Tharpe to Chicago with her, where they soon became members of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Tharpe's musical expression was celebrated and encouraged by her mother and the church congregation, all of whom regarded Tharpe as a musical prodigy.
Her teenage years traveling with her mother to various cities to perform in chapels, churches, and revival groups earned Tharpe nationwide celebrity in the church. In 1934, when Tharpe was just 19 years old, her mother arranged her marriage to preacher, Reverend Thomas Tharpe. She worked for the church under her husband's direction for the next four years, but it is believed he possessed a negative attitude toward women and used Tharpe's musical celebrity for monetary gain. She left him to begin a new life in New York and took her mother with her.
When Tharpe accepted a job at the prestigious Cotton Club in New York City, she found herself in a new realm of performance, far from the gospel singing of the church. She was suddenly in showbiz, and her church-going fans were not too happy about her transition. "It was like a bomb had dropped on gospel music when she flipped," said Tharpe's longtime friend Ira Tucker Jr. in a PBS episode of American Masters. "... It was hurtful to a lot of people, because they felt as though they had lost something. They had something, and it was great, but now it wa American gospel and rock musician (1915–1973) Musical artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born Rosetta Nubin, March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and also later guitarists, such as Eric Clapton. 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. Her European tour with Muddy Waters in 1964, with a stop in Manchester on May 7, is cited by British guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards. Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of "light" in the "darkness" of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning in 1938 with the recording "Rock Me" and with her 1939 hit "This Train". Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists such as Ira Tucker Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While controversial among conservative religious groups due to her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel mu Sister Rosetta Tharpe