Bound for Glory

Paying tribute to unforgettable forgotten blues/gospel star Sister Rosetta Tharpe


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Published: Jan 8, 2008

Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Lucky Millinder
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O, SISTER: "She needs a star on Broad Street and a mural in her honor," says Bob Merz.

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The energetic singing and guitar playing of Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) broke ground not only for gospel music, but provided much of the inspiration for rock 'n' roll.

She deserves better than an unmarked grave in East Germantown's Northwood Cemetery.

"Tharpe resided in Arkansas for five and a half years, yet it seems there is an article about her in the local press every other week," says Bob Merz, the organizer behind this Saturday's Tharpe tribute show at the Keswick. "She lived here for 15! We need to reclaim her! She needs a star on Broad Street and a mural in her honor."

Merz was inspired to put together the event after seeing Gayle Wald, professor at the George Washington University, on the TV version of Radio Times. She was talking about her new book, a lively biography of Tharpe called Shout, Sister, Shout! (Beacon Press).

Wald was encouraging efforts to get donations for an appropriate monument. Proceeds from Merz's show will go toward placing a memorial at Tharpe's grave.

"She was a beautiful type of person, free-hearted as she could be," recalls Ira Tucker Sr., lead singer of the still-active Dixie Hummingbirds who will perform at the concert, as will Marie Knight, Willa Ward and Odetta. Tucker helped Tharpe with much of the business until her marriage to Russell Morrison.

"She called me her brother, 'My brother gonna do this, my brother gonna do that.'" The two had a long and fruitful musical association. Tucker remembers the first time he saw her perform:

"We were playing at the Golden Gate Auditorium in New York. That was in the early '40s. She had made some records with Lucky Millinder, and was getting ready to return to gospel. The promoter brought her out as a guest. Everybody was liking her steel guitar."

UP FOR THE COUNT: Tharpe and Count Basie, back in the day.

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Yes, Tharpe played that same steel-bodied National guitar that was a trademark for so many blues players in the days before amplification, a real emblem of Tharpe's independence.

While she proclaimed a love of the Lord, she figured all things musical were fair game for praise. The philosophical debates are long and heated whether a gospel artist should reach beyond the church, but reach Tharpe did, making hits with "Up Above My Head" and "This Train (Is Bound For Glory)" as crossovers, as well as secular songs like "Four or Five Times." Video clips of Tharpe fronting Lucky Millinder's Orchestra on the soundie for "Lonesome Road" show what gave church folks agita: sacred songs that include booty-shaking breaks by a horde of showgirls. Small wonder Tharpe had to be periodically forgiven by the brethren.

Other footage worth Googling includes her later playing on electric guitar, digging deep with a thumb pick and doing her own dancing. Her moves suggest one place Chuck Berry may have looked while dreaming up his duckwalk. Tucker assures us that back then, people really did consider it flattery when they noticed other artists borrowing their stuff. Today Bonnie Raitt and Eric Clapton readily name her as inspiration for their own guitar pyrotechnics.

Philly has always been a great town for gospel, so when Jim Crow in Richmond became insufferable, it was easy for Tharpe to sell her fine house there for a home at Progress Plaza and membership in Bright Hope Baptist Church.

Tucker says she was welcomed by the gospel community here. "We worked and worked until she died. Rosetta had sugar. I took her to my doctor, but she never went back." He muses about how she'd promise to take care of herself but didn't. "Gangrene set in." But did that stop her? "I saw Rosetta with one leg, cutting the grass in her front yard."

(m_armstrong@citypaper.net)

Fri., Jan. 11, 8 p.m., with Dixie Hummingbirds, Marie Knight, Willa Ward, Odetta and other gospel luminaries, $21-$42, Keswick Theatre, 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650, keswicktheatre.com.