Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was doing things with an electric guitar in the late 1930s that the men credited with inventing rock and roll wouldn’t attempt for another two decades. Born Rosetta Nubin on March 20, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, she became gospel music’s first superstar. She also became the first gospel artist signed to a major record label and the first to cross over into secular charts. Sister Rosetta Tharpe pioneered heavy electric guitar distortion, shattered racial and gender conventions, and directly influenced Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and virtually every musician who shaped early rock and roll.

Yet for decades after her death in 1973, mainstream music history largely forgot Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The men she influenced became legends. The woman who showed them the way ended up in an unmarked grave in Philadelphia. Recent years have corrected that erasure — Rolling Stone named her the sixth-greatest guitarist of all time in 2023, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted her in 2018 — but her story remains one of the most important and underappreciated in American music history.

A Child Prodigy in the Church

Rosetta Nubin was born on a farm outside Cotton Plant, a small town in Woodruff County, Arkansas. Her father, Willis Atkins, worked as a farm laborer. Her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, sang, played mandolin, and traveled as an evangelist for the Church of God in Christ. This Pentecostal denomination would shape Rosetta’s entire musical foundation. The church’s worship services were exuberant and physical, featuring rhythmic singing, hand clapping, and instrumental accompaniment. This radical departure from more restrained Protestant worship gave the young Tharpe both her musical language and her fearlessness as a performer.

Rosetta picked up the guitar at age four and sang in church services almost as soon as she could talk. By age six, she performed alongside her mother with a traveling evangelist troupe. Promoters billed her as “Little Rosetta Nubin, the Singing and Guitar Playing Miracle.” The duo toured churches throughout the South and drew large crowds wherever they went. Even at that young age, audiences recognized something extraordinary in the child’s playing.

In the mid-1920s, Rosetta and her mother relocated to Chicago’s South Side. They arrived in the midst of the Great Migration that was transforming the city’s cultural landscape. Chicago in the 1920s served as a crossroads where New Orleans jazz, Mississippi Delta blues, and Southern gospel collided. Young Rosetta absorbed it all. She heard blues and jazz pouring out of Chicago’s clubs, and those sounds began filtering into her gospel performances.

The Church of God in Christ allowed women to preach and perform more freely than many denominations, but boundaries still existed. Gospel was sacred music, and mixing it with jazz and blues sounds struck many churchgoers as inappropriate. Sister Rosetta Tharpe would spend her entire career navigating — and often ignoring — that tension.

In 1934, at age nineteen, Rosetta married a Church of God in Christ preacher named Thomas J. Tharpe. Thomas preached while Rosetta drew crowds with her singing and guitar playing. The marriage didn’t last — they separated in 1938 and divorced in 1943 — but Rosetta kept the Tharpe name for the rest of her career. She also gained the honorific “Sister,” a common title within the Pentecostal church. It became inseparable from her identity as a performer.

From the Cotton Club to Decca Records

In 1938, Sister Rosetta Tharpe made the move that would change everything. She left Chicago for New York City, and the trajectory of her career — and of American popular music — shifted almost immediately. That October, she began performing at the Cotton Club in Harlem. The legendary nightclub had hosted Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and the biggest names in jazz. A gospel singer performing at a secular nightclub was virtually unheard of. A Black woman playing electric guitar in that setting broke entirely new ground. Conservative churchgoers were scandalized. Secular audiences were thrilled.

That same year, Tharpe signed a recording contract with Decca Records. She became the first gospel musician to record for a major label. Her debut singles included a version of Thomas A. Dorsey’s “Rock Me” (originally titled “Hide Me in Thy Bosom”) and “This Train.” Both became immediate hits. “Rock Me” carried particular significance — Tharpe’s delivery blurred the line between sacred and secular so thoroughly that listeners could hear the song as either a spiritual plea or something far more earthly. Her electric guitar work on these recordings was bold and rhythmically aggressive, nothing like the acoustic accompaniment that gospel audiences expected.

On December 23, 1938, Tharpe performed at John Hammond’s landmark “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall. Hammond organized the event to showcase the full spectrum of African American music, from gospel to jazz to blues. Tharpe’s appearance placed her alongside some of the most important musicians of the era. The concert cemented her reputation as a crossover artist and introduced her to an even wider audience.

In 1941, Tharpe officially joined Lucky Millinder’s swing band, one of the most popular orchestras of the era. She toured with Millinder throughout the early 1940s and performed jazz-inflected numbers like “I Want a Tall Skinny Papa” and “Shout, Sister, Shout.” These songs had little connection to her gospel roots. The performances further alienated conservative religious fans but expanded her secular following enormously. She became a celebrity, popular with both Black and white audiences, and a favorite among Black soldiers serving in World War II.

The most historically significant recording of this period came in late 1944. Tharpe recorded “Strange Things Happening Every Day” with boogie-woogie pianist Sammy Price. The song featured her electrifying guitar work and distinctive vocal delivery — part preacher, part blues shouter, entirely her own.

Released in early 1945, it climbed to number two on Billboard’s “race records” chart (later renamed the R&B chart). That made it the first gospel recording to crack the secular top ten. Music historians identify “Strange Things Happening Every Day” as a direct precursor to rock and roll. Some call it the first rock and roll record, period. The song’s driving rhythm, distorted electric guitar, and rebellious energy anticipated everything that would follow in the 1950s.

The Guitar That Changed Everything

Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s importance as a guitarist cannot be overstated, and it is here that her connection to the blues tradition runs deepest. She played a Gibson SG (and later other Gibson models) with a style that drew from Delta blues fingerpicking, jazz chord voicings, and the rhythmic intensity of Pentecostal worship music. The result was something entirely new — a guitar sound that was louder, more distorted, and more aggressive than anything her contemporaries produced.

By the early 1940s, Tharpe was using heavy distortion and feedback on her electric guitar. These techniques wouldn’t become widespread until rock guitarists adopted them in the 1960s. She played with a physical intensity that matched her vocals. She bent strings, hammered out percussive rhythms, and unleashed single-note runs that could cut through a full swing orchestra. She treated the guitar not as mere accompaniment but as an equal voice in the music, trading phrases with her own vocals in a call-and-response pattern rooted in the Black church.

The musicians who would later be celebrated as rock and roll pioneers heard Tharpe and took notes. Chuck Berry’s signature guitar style — the driving rhythms, the showmanship, the duck walk across the stage — owed a direct debt to her approach. Little Richard cited her as his primary inspiration. He recalled how seeing Tharpe perform as a child changed his life. Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis all grew up hearing her on the radio and in churches across the South. Johnny Cash spoke openly about her influence on his musical development. The British blues invasion artists of the 1960s, including Keith Richards, traced their fascination with American roots music partly to her recordings.

What made Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s guitar work so distinctive was its refusal to stay in one lane. She could play delicate fingerpicked passages that recalled the acoustic blues traditions of the rural South, then pivot to hard-charging electric riffs that anticipated rock and roll by two decades. She played standing up, moving across the stage, making the guitar a visual as well as sonic instrument.

In an era when female instrumentalists were rare in any genre, Tharpe’s virtuosity stood apart — and she knew it. She performed with confidence and showmanship that dared anyone to question whether a woman belonged at center stage with a guitar.

Marie Knight and the Late 1940s

After the war, Tharpe shifted direction. In 1946, she began a musical partnership with gospel singer Marie Knight. Together they produced some of the most powerful recordings of both their careers. Knight’s smooth, controlled mezzo-soprano provided a striking contrast to Tharpe’s raw, exuberant delivery. The two developed a vocal interplay that drew on gospel call-and-response traditions while pushing into new emotional territory.

The duo recorded a string of successful singles for Decca, including “Up Above My Head” (1948) and “Beams of Heaven” (1947). These tracks showcased their vocal chemistry against Tharpe’s commanding guitar work. They toured extensively together, with Knight on piano and Tharpe on guitar. Their audiences ranged from church congregations to concert halls. Their personal relationship was known within the music industry but kept private from the public, as was common for the era.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Knight also released several blues singles during this period, attempting to capitalize on the commercial blues market. The move backfired. The blues recordings alienated their core gospel audience without breaking through to mainstream blues fans. It reminded everyone of the precarious position Tharpe occupied between sacred and secular music. She could draw from both worlds, but fully committing to either one came at a cost.

In 1951, Tharpe married her manager, Russell Morrison, in one of the most extraordinary events of her career. The wedding took place at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., before a paying audience of more than 20,000 people. A concert followed the ceremony, and the recording was later released as an album. The spectacle demonstrated Tharpe’s enormous popularity and her flair for showmanship. It also drew criticism from those who felt she was turning sacred rituals into entertainment. The marriage itself proved troubled and would eventually end.

Decline, Rediscovery, and the Manchester Performance

By the mid-1950s, Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s commercial fortunes in the United States had declined significantly. Rock and roll — the very genre she had helped create — was now dominated by young white men like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. They had absorbed her innovations and repackaged them for mainstream audiences. The irony was bitter. Tharpe had laid the groundwork, but 1950s America was not prepared to credit a Black woman as the architect of its most popular new music.

Tharpe responded by taking her talents overseas. Beginning in 1957, she toured Europe regularly and found enthusiastic audiences and a level of respect that was increasingly difficult to come by at home. The burgeoning British rock scene of the early 1960s held a deep appreciation for African American roots music. Young British musicians celebrated artists like Tharpe as living legends who represented the original American blues and gospel traditions.

In May 1964, Sister Rosetta Tharpe delivered what would become her most iconic performance. As part of the American Folk Blues Festival’s Blues and Gospel Caravan, she performed at an abandoned railway station in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, England. Granada Television filmed the performance for a special broadcast. Tharpe arrived in a horse-drawn carriage, stepped onto the platform, and launched into “Didn’t It Rain.” She chose the song on the spot, inspired by the downpour that had preceded her entrance.

The footage has circulated widely in the decades since. It captures everything that made Tharpe extraordinary: the power of her voice, the authority of her guitar playing, the joy she brought to every performance, and her ability to connect with an audience across any divide. Muddy Waters also performed on the same program, placing Tharpe alongside one of the towering figures of Chicago blues.

Tharpe’s later years brought mounting health problems. She developed diabetes, which gradually limited her ability to tour. Her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, died in 1969 and left Tharpe deeply depressed — the two had been inseparable musical partners since Rosetta’s childhood. Tharpe’s last known recording was filmed in Denmark in 1970. In it, she eulogized her mother with the hymn “Precious Lord.” By then, doctors had amputated one of her legs due to complications from diabetes.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe died of a stroke on October 9, 1973, at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. She was 58 years old. She was buried in Northwood Cemetery in Philadelphia in an unmarked grave — a final indignity for an artist who had changed the course of popular music. Decades later, supporters erected a headstone bearing an inscription from her childhood friend Roxie Moore: “She would sing until you cried, and then she would sing until you danced for joy.”

Legacy and Long-Overdue Recognition

For more than three decades after her death, Sister Rosetta Tharpe existed largely in the margins of music history. The rock and roll narrative had centered on the men she influenced — Berry, Presley, Little Richard — while the woman who preceded them all was reduced to a footnote. That began to change in the early 2000s. Scholars, musicians, and advocates recognized the injustice of her erasure and started pushing back.

In 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in Tharpe’s honor. Gayle F. Wald’s biography Shout, Sister, Shout! appeared in 2007 and provided the first comprehensive account of her life. It brought her story to a new generation of readers. That same year, the Blues Hall of Fame inducted Sister Rosetta Tharpe, acknowledging her profound impact on the blues tradition. In 2004, the Library of Congress National Recording Registry added her recording of “Down by the Riverside.” The Registry noted her influence on gospel, jazz, and rock artists.

The most significant recognition came in May 2018. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame posthumously inducted Sister Rosetta Tharpe as an Early Influence. The induction was long overdue — she had been eligible since 1986 — but it formally acknowledged what musicians had known for decades. Rock and roll did not begin with Elvis Presley or Chuck Berry. It began with a woman from Arkansas who played electric guitar in ways nobody had imagined possible.

In 2023, Rolling Stone placed Tharpe at number six on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. The ranking placed her higher than legends like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards. It was a statement about her technical skill, her innovation, and her lasting impact. In 2025, Lizzo announced she would portray Tharpe in an upcoming biopic produced by Amazon MGM Studios, promising to bring her story to the widest audience yet.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s influence extends far beyond the musicians she directly inspired. She demonstrated that a Black woman could be a virtuoso instrumentalist, a commanding stage presence, and a commercial success in an industry built on exclusion. She showed that sacred and secular music were not enemies but siblings, drawing from the same emotional well. And she proved that the electric guitar — the instrument that would define popular music for the rest of the twentieth century — was not a man’s tool. She got there first, played it harder, and did it with a smile that dared the world to keep up.

Essential Listening

Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s catalog spans four decades. It encompasses gospel, blues, jazz, and the earliest stirrings of rock and roll. These recordings capture the range and power of her artistry.

Essential Recordings

• “Strange Things Happening Every Day” (1944) — The song many historians consider the first rock and roll record. Tharpe’s distorted electric guitar and driving vocal delivery over Sammy Price’s boogie-woogie piano created a template that the 1950s would follow.
• “Rock Me” (1938) — Her first major hit and a masterclass in blurring the sacred and secular. The gospel lyrics ride atop a blues-inflected arrangement that made church audiences uncomfortable and secular audiences ecstatic.
• “Up Above My Head” (1948) — Recorded with Marie Knight, this joyful duet showcases the vocal chemistry between the two singers and Tharpe’s ability to make gospel music feel like a celebration.
• “This Train” (1938) — One of her earliest Decca recordings and a song that became a standard. Tharpe’s guitar work transforms a traditional spiritual into something urgent and alive.
• “Didn’t It Rain” (1964 Manchester performance) — Not a studio recording but an essential document. The Granada Television footage captures Tharpe performing in the rain at a Manchester train station — one of the most electrifying live performances ever captured on film.
• “Down by the Riverside” (1948) — The Library of Congress selected this recording for its National Recording Registry. It captures her spirited guitar playing and unique vocal style at their peak.
• “Shout, Sister, Shout” (1941) — Recorded with Lucky Millinder’s orchestra, this swinging performance shows Tharpe at her most exuberant, commanding a full big band with her voice and guitar.

Recommended Collections

• Complete Recorded Works, Vols. 1-4 (Document Records) — Comprehensive chronological collections of her recordings from 1938 through the late 1940s, essential for anyone serious about understanding her full artistic development.
• Gospel Train (Decca/MCA) — A solid overview of her Decca recordings that captures both her gospel and crossover material.
• The Original Soul Sister (Proper Records) — A well-curated box set that spans her career and provides an excellent introduction to her range as an artist.