![]() Janis made a huge impact on the music scene. I’ve been doing that forever.” Sister Rosetta Tharpe didn’t get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 2018.ĭespite Sister Rosetta Tharpe walking so singers like Janis Joplin could run, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame twenty-three years before Tharpe, in 1995. Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s biographer Gayle Wald quotes Tharpe as saying “Oh, these kids and rock and roll - this is just sped up rhythm and blues. Tharpe’s reputation was damaged among religious purists: her record sales and engagements dropped off and, while she clawed her way back to appear at the Apollo Theatre alongside The Caravans and James Cleveland by 1960, she wasn’t a household name like she was before. In 1946, she had a huge hit with rumoured lover Madame Marie Knight, “Up Above My Head.” The couple played to large church crowds until the ’50s, when Knight moved permanently into secular music and Tharpe planted herself firmly in gospel. In 1944, Tharpe cracked the Billboard Top Ten with the song ‘Strange Things Happening Every Day’, a collaboration with “boogie-woogie pianist,” Sammy Price. Tharpe was one of two black gospel acts - the other being Golden Gate Quartet - to record for American soldiers in World War 2. Tharpe “became a virtual overnight sensation” to the music scene, with her first records ‘Rock Me’ and ‘This Train’. Sister Rosetta Tharpe took inspiration from the blues she brought gospel, spiritual music, to mainstream rock and she pioneered the pop-gospel genre. Tharpe was singing and playing guitar as ‘Little Rosetta Nubin’ by the time she was four-years-old, and was viewed as a musical prodigy among her community. Her mother was a women’s speaker for the Church of God in Christ, where music and dance was a huge part of the congregation. Her parents picked cotton, but were also both musicians. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, named Rosetta Nubin at birth, was born on March 20, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. She brought Little Richard to the stage when he was only 14-years-old. ![]() As the “ Godmother of Rock ‘N’ Roll,” gospel-singing Tharpe was one of many Black women who came before - and inspired - rock ‘geniuses’ like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Tharpe was rumored to have romantic relationships with a few different women, including singer Marie Knight. This list wouldn’t be worth anything without putting Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the beginning, because her contribution to rock and roll has shaped what music is today. These three women have (finally) been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and we’re going to take a look at why. They have influenced male rock ‘geniuses’, they’ve inspired new genres of music, they’ve been the soundtrack for revolutionary movements, and they’ve often been left undervalued or completely uncredited. Lesbian and bisexual women have been at the forefront of rock, punk, and counterculture rebellion.
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