Born on this day in 1915, Rosetta Tharpe revolutionized the sound of electric guitar by using distortion with her unique phrasing & picking, inspiring Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Johnny Cash & Elvis Presley
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief
Born in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas to musical parents who also worked as cotton pickers, Tharpe was a musical prodigy who is reported to have picked up a guitar at four and began performing at age six with her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, a traveling evangelist and mandolin player for the Church of God in Christ.
Though strictly a gospel performer at the outset, by early adulthood, Tharpe started blending spiritual lyrics with the secular sounds of the time, bringing gospel music into nightclubs, while introducing elements of rhythm and blues to church audiences.
At 23, Tharpe started recording her genre-bending sound for Decca Records, resulting in hits such as “Rock Me” and “That’s All”. Tharpe was hired by Lucky Millinder in 1941 to sing and play with his swing band, and toured with them for years performing even more worldly material, including uptempo dance numbers such as “I Want A Tall Skinny Papa”.
Though considered transgressive and controversial at the time, causing an uproar among the gospel community, this boundary-crossing by Tharpe ultimately cemented her legacy as “Godmother of Rock and Roll.”
Though it was rare for women to play guitar in the 1930s and 1940s, Tharpe was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, and her picking technique and phrasing influenced countless artists who followed, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash.
Little Richard cited Tharpe as one of his major influences, and Chuck Berry once said his career was “one long Rosetta Tharpe impression.”
When you hear Tharpe-penned songs like “That’s All”, “This Train”, “I Want To Live So God Can Use Me” or her covers of gospel tunes like “Just A Closer Walk With Thee”, “Precious Lord, Hold My Hand”, “I Want Jesus To Walk Around My Bedside”or “Strange Things Happening Every Day”, you know neither Richard nor Berry were exaggerating.
Tharpe synthesized blues, hokum, hillbilly, gospel and swing music into her own rocking brand of strumming, bending, picking and vocalizing.
Tharpe’s inclusion on the brief-but-innovative track “Smoke Hour 
Willie Nelson” on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning LP Cowboy Carter (2024) inspired me to revisit Tharpe’s foundational, liminal music last year via The Decca Singles, Volumes 1-5compilation series (streaming on Spotify and Apple Music), which covers her early recordings plus her big band, Trio and her later work.
“Smoke Hour Willie Nelson” features a radio dial switching between yodeling, blues, gospel & 50s rock n roll until we land on K-N-T-R-Y station DJ Willie Nelson teeing up Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” into this lineage. The lone female voice heard among the dial turns? Tharpe singing her iconic version of “Down By The Riverside”.
Tharpe was known for her exuberant performances (secular & non-secular) & often her only accompaniment was her own dynamic guitar playing.
A personal Tharpe favorite is “Didn’t It Rain”), where she’s backed by the Sam Price Trio, trades vocals with frequent collaborator Marie Knight and rips an electrifying guitar solo – this song goes so hard and is still so infectious, I can’t help myself from bopping along every time I hear it.
Below is video of her famous live 1966 performance of it in France:
Tharpe was finally inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, and in 2024 Gibson Guitars debuted the Rosetta Tharpe Collection of merchandise in tribute to her (including a miniature replica of the iconic 1961 Les Paul she used to play, but she is still not well-known enough for her vital contributions to American music, even with the Cowboy Carter hat tip.
To learn more about Tharpe, check out the 2008 biography Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold Story of Rock-And-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle Wald, watch the 2011 documentary The Godmother of Rock and Roll – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Gibson Guitars-produced short documentary Shout, Sister, Shout: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, as well as performance clips of her available on YouTube.
Sources:
- https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/544226085/forebears-sister-rosetta-tharpe-the-godmother-of-rock-n-roll
- https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/sister-rosetta-tharpe-1781/
- https://afropunk.com/2019/03/rosetta-tharpe/
- https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/sister-rosetta-tharpe-rocknroll-pioneer/
- https://guitargirlmag.com/featured/%EF%BB%BFsister-rosetta-tharpe-the-godmother-of-gibson-and-rock-and-roll/
- https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Sister-Rosetta-Tharpe
