The Westport Library Resource Guides: Sister Rosetta Tharpe: About

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Who was Sister Rosetta Tharpe?

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (born March 20, 1915, Cotton Plant, Arkansas, U.S.—died October 9, 1973, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American guitar player and gospel and blues singer who was popular in the 1930s and ’40s. She sang traditional gospel songs with contemporary jazz tempos that she played on her electric guitar. With these performances she introduced gospel into nightclubs and concert venues. Her work influenced early rock and rollers such as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley.

Tharpe was the daughter of farm laborer Willis Atkins and singer, mandolin player, and evangelist Katie Harper Atkins (later Katie Bell Nubin or “Mother Bell”). Because no official birth certificate was issued, there is uncertainty regarding her given name, and at various times she was called Rosa, Rosie Etta, and Rosabell before becoming known to the world as Sister Rosetta Tharpe (the last name of her first husband). She began singing and playing the guitar when she was four. At age six she and her mother sang gospel songs with an evangelist troupe that traveled throughout the South. In the 1920s the two settled in Chicago, where they continued to perform in churches and at other religious gatherings, often attracting large crowds in the gospel community. As she grew older, Rosetta was influenced by the jazz and blues she heard in Chicago, and she began to blend those elements into her gospel performances.

In 1934 she married a minister, Thomas J. Tharpe (some records spell his last name as Thorpe), to whose sermons she drew crowds with her singing and playing. The couple separated in 1938 (divorced 1943), and, although she remarried twice, she kept Tharpe as her stage name. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica