THARPE, SISTER ROSETTA (born Rosetta Nubin, 20 March 1915–9 October 1973), singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She was the first gospel performer to sign to a major record label and was one of the earliest to cross over into secular music.
Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, she was introduced to music at a young age by her mother, a singer and mandolin player. Beginning when Rosetta was six, the mother-daughter duo performed together, traveling with an evangelical troupe throughout the South, eventually winding up in Chicago in the late 1920s. At nineteen, she married minister Thomas A. Tharpe, whose last name she would continue to use as a stage name long after their divorce in 1934.
Tharpe’s early performances showcased her exceptional virtuosity with the guitar, a rare instrument for African American women at the time. Influenced by the pianist Arizona Dranes, Tharpe began to incorporate elements of blues into her own developing gospel style.
In 1938 Tharpe moved to New York and quickly rose to fame after signing with the major label Decca Records. Her instant hits “Rock Me,” “That’s All,” “My Man and I,” and “The Lonesome Road” demonstrated her versatility, appealing to both gospel and secular audiences. That same year Tharpe performed in John Hammond’s “From Spirituals to Swing” concerts at Carnegie Hall and toured extensively throughout the Northeast, gaining even greater recognition.
Despite facing criticism from religious groups for her musical crossover ventures, Tharpe remained dedicated to her style and her popularity soared. Over the next several years she collaborated with jazz luminaries like Cab Calloway and Lucky Millinder, and in 1944 she released “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” the first gospel record to become a hit on Billboard’s “Race Records” chart (which later became the R&B chart). It has since been cited as the first rock-and-roll record.
In the 1950s and 1960s Tharpe returned to her gospel roots. In 1964 she performed with other blues and gospel musicians, including Muddy Waters, in a folk, blues, and gospel television special, and that same year she toured Europe and Great Britain, delivering a memorable performance of “Didn’t It Rain?” at a railway platform in Manchester. Despite becoming seriously ill in 1970 Tharpe peformed up until her death in 1973. Tharpe’s legacy has continued to grow since the days when Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash were acknowledging her impact on their music. In 2018 her 1944 version of “Down by the Riverside” was selected for the National Recording Registry of the US Library of Congress; that same year she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2023 Rolling Stone listed her as No. 6 on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time.