Track Listings
1. Precious Lord
2. Peace In The Valley
3. Didn't It Rain
4. Gospel Train, The
5. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
6. He's Got The Whole World In His Hands
7. Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down
8. Mansions In The Sky
9. Is Everybody Happy
10. Vacation In The Sky
11. Two Little Fishes, Five Loaves Of Bread
12. Can't Sit Down
13. Nobody Know The Trouble I've Seen
14. Jonah In The Whale
15. Travelin' Shoes
16. That's All
17. Go Ahead
18. Down By The Riverside
Sister Rosetta Tharpe Biography
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 furore: 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. Her performances were curtailed even further
by 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.
A number of musicians, ranging from Elvis Presley and Jerry
Lee Lewis to Isaac Hayes and Keith Richards, 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 Macon, Georgia. In 1945, she heard Little 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. Johnny Cash's daughter
Rosanne similarly stated in an interview with Larry King
that Tharpe was her father's favorite singer. UK indie rock
band Noisettes released a single "Sister Rosetta (Capture
The Spirit)" in January 2007. 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.
