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Posts tagged as “COWBOY CARTER”

WHM: How Evangelist and Guitar Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Turned Her Rock of Ages into Rock N Roll

WHM: How Evangelist and Guitar Pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Turned Her Rock of Ages into Rock N Roll

By goodblacknews on March 20, 2025

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:

REVIEW: I’ve Got Such Big Feelings for WILLOW’s Emotive, Exploratory and Excellent New LP “empathogen”

REVIEW: I’ve Got Such Big Feelings for WILLOW’s Emotive, Exploratory and Excellent New LP “empathogen”

By goodblacknews on May 10, 2024
by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

I’m starting off straight up corny by saying I’ve been a “transparent soul” with anyone who’d listen to me about my anticipation of WILLOW’s sixth and latest solo LP, which finally dropped May 3rd.

My owning of my corniness, turns out, totally vibes with the messages about the freedom to express & accept your feelings, warts and all, coursing throughout the #greatalbum “empathogen” (2024).

Not only do I absolutely love how WILLOW wrestles lyrically (and musically) with Big Ideas such as existence, ego, anxiety, pain, self-sabotage, fear and love, she does so in such soul-felt, sophisticated & surprising ways, I have to compliment the precise production by WILLOW and her fellow producers Chris Greatti, Eddie Benjamin and Jon Batiste.

There are myriad sounds, echo effects and vocal arrangements involved in each track, even the stripped down ones, but none ever feel overdone — just purposeful and fresh. It’s as if WILLOW threw her hands into the cosmic river of music, tapped into its source, and allowed it to flow freely through her.

There’s a lot going on technically in the music I can’t speak on with any authority (e.g. the multiple time signatures, turnarounds, uncommon verse/chorus structures) but what I can talk about is how it hits the ears and how it feels — free, unexpected, relatable, or, in one word — embracing.

WILLOW is clearly a student of music and draws on varied influences (her IG post of her working her voice out to Ella Fitzgerald’s legendary scat on “How High The Moon” blew my mind a few months ago and still lives rent free in what’s left of my head), but right now she’s reminding me most of the great Esperanza Spalding, particularly during her “Emily’s D+Evolution” (2016) jazz/pop/rock era.

WILLOW’s own pop/rock/punk/soul explorations from the past few years also inform her current jazz/funk/fusion present (and hopefully future).

The singles released from the LP, “symptom of life” and “bigfeelings”, are the best ambassadors for this tight 12-song offering which literally begins with what sounds like an off-mic Jon Batiste screeching, as if being born, “I love everything!”

(BTW, could Batiste be on more of a roll? He also co-produces and co-writes “Ameriican Requiem”, the opening track on COWBOY CARTER. If I’m an artist, I’m thinkin get this man to help kick off my LP, stat, cuz greatness will surely follow!)

After Batiste, we hear steady rimshots underneath WILLOW’s “ah oo ah ah” breaths until she sings “I live my life” — and I didn’t conjure my previous cosmic music river metaphor out of nowhere as WILLOW then sings “I trust this river to carry me / home” in this mystifyingly captivating LP opener titled “home”.