Sister Rosetta Tharpe: YouTube Clip(s) of the Month

OK, so it’s 2021. Every honest person with a functioning brain stem understands and recognizes that much of U.S. history has been whitewashed and filtered through a pretty distorted lens. The contributions of countless men and women of color have been swept under the rug for decades. But it’s one thing to know that intellectually, and quite another to stumble upon something so big and so notable that it seems impossible to have been hidden from you for so long.

I am a huge music fan, and have pretty deep knowledge about a lot of musical genres and movements. This is not to brag, but to point out how staggered I was when I found out that I’d been missing a major component of the history of rock music. Did you know that electric rock guitar was basically invented by a single person — a Black female gospel singer who was shredding out guitar solos as early as the 1940s? Neither did I.

I’ve been listening to a fantastic podcast recently called “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs.” Basically, each episode, rock historian Andrew Hickey reviews the history of one particular character in rock history and illustrates their importance and what they brought to the genre by examining one of their biggest songs. When I got to the Sister Rosetta Tharpe episode, I figured it would be about some boring old gospel singer who did vocal harmonies or something. I had no idea.

It turns out that Sister Rosetta was actually the creator of what we consider electric rock guitar. When electric guitars were first invented, no one really knew what they were capable of, and they were largely considered a novelty. Sister Rosetta figured out that she could use distortion and feedback to create new sounds that (somewhat) mimicked the harmonies of a traditional backing choir. She discovered how to use sustain to lengthen and distort notes. She even came up with all the guitar hero poses we associate with guys like Jimmy Page and Hendrix.

The clip below, recorded in 1960, is one of my favorites, with Sister Rosetta and a jazz combo tearing through the old standard “This Little Light of Mine.” I love how she graciously steps aside to let the clarinet and trumpet players solo, then silences them with a “Shhh” gesture at the 2.08 mark and proceeds to let loose with a classic solo of her own.

Every punk rock historian points to the Sex Pistols 1976 Manchester gig as Ground Zero for the English punk explosion, as attendees went on to form Joy Division, The Smiths, Buzzcocks, and more. But until I started digging into Sister Rosetta’s story, I didn’t realize she performed her own iconic gig in Manchester in 1963. Sister Rosetta was touring with a slate of blues musicians including Muddy Waters, and their only British stop was in the industrial hub. Seemingly every blues fan who would go on to be a rock star was at the show, soaking up Sister Rosetta’s guitar heroics. Four of them arrived together in a minivan they’d driven all the way from London: Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Brian Jones.

The next year, the tour returned to Manchester for a performance that was recorded and broadcast. The audience was again full of young Sister Rosetta acolytes, including Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. Thanks to the television broadcast, there is still footage of that show, including Sister Rosetta’s blistering take on “Didn’t It Rain?”, which she decided to play at the last minute because the crowd had been sitting in the rain waiting for her to play.

I could go on posting Sister Rosetta videos all day, but I’ll leave you with one more favorite. Taken from something called The Gospel Time TV show, it’s her performing “Up Above My Head” with a (barely used) choir. It chugs along like a pretty standard blues/gospel tune until about the 1.20 mark, where Sister Rosetta lets loose with a 40-second solo that basically shows everything Chuck Berry and the rest of the 1950s’ guitar players stole from her.

Anyway, as you can see, Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s contributions to rock music are so big and so undeniable that it’s frankly astounding how deeply they’ve been buried. She was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 as an “early influencer,” but I’d go a step further and say she’s the first rock n’ roll guitarist, period.