REVIEWS

Check out Sister Rosetta Tharpe shredding the guitar.

This week’s album was released in 1958 and is a Black gospel work of art by ‘The Godmother of Rock-and-Roll’, who inspired other musicians like Elvis and Chuck Berry. 

Being born unto a traveling missionary woman on March 20, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, Rosetta Tharpe had grown up around music and God. She was considered a prodigy, completely mastering the guitar at 6. When her family moved to Chicago in 1921, she and her mother became a musical duo, touring the South. Rosetta soon found her style in her music, which is primarily in rock-and-roll and traditional gospel. Her voice is very theatrical, with dramatic riffs and a powerful vibrato.

Some of her notable works include My Journey to The Sky, This Train, and Down by The Riverside, all signed with Decca Records in the 30s and 40s. Rosette Tharpe died on October 9, 1973, with a life well spent. In 2020, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award was given to her in her honor and the legacy she left behind, which was mainly being a Black woman in the 1900s and still being a pioneer of the Rock genre and all its subgenres, like RnB, Metal or ‘Rock n’ Soul’. Below is a video of one of her playing guitar to one of her hits, Up Above my Head I Hear Music in the Air.

This album is a masterpiece of displaying original Black gospel and early rock and roll. Whether or not you like gospel or old rock, you can thank Sister Rosetta Tharpe for being one of the few star pioneers that created rock and all of its subgenres.