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Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Arkansas native Rosetta Nubin Tharpe was one of gospel music’s first superstars, the first gospel performer to record for a major record label (Decca), and an early crossover from gospel to secular music. Rosetta Nubin was born in Cotton Plant (Woodruff County) on March 20, 1915, to Katie Bell Nubin, an evangelist, singer, and mandolin player for the Church of God in Christ. No mention is found of her father. Nubin began performing at age four, playing guitar and singing “Jesus is on the Main Line.” By age six, Nubin appeared regularly with her mother, performing a mix of gospel and secular music styles that would eventually make her famous. As a youth, she could sing and keep on pitch and hold a melody. Her vocal qualities, however, paled beside her abilities on the guitar"she played individual tones, melodies, and riffs instead of just strumming chords. This talent was all the more remarkable because, at the time, few African-American women played guitar. Nubin’s guitar style was influenced by her mother’s mandolin playing, pianist Arizona Dranes, and composer Florence Price, with whom Rosetta studied in Cotton Plant. She also sang the popular hymns of the day, including the compositions of bluesman turned gospel musician, Thomas A. Dorsey. Indeed, elements of blues are readily apparent in Nubin’s guitar styling. Later, Nubin’s music would be influenced by her work with jazz greats Lucky Milliner and Cab Calloway. Billed as the “singing and guitar-playing miracle,” Nubin was an added attraction at her mother’s church services. Both mother and daughter worked as members of an evangelistic troupe that worked throughout the South before arriving in Chicago in the late 1920s. There they became part of the growing Holiness movement, a late nineteenth-century offshoot of the Pentecostal denomination which, in the 1890s, led to the formation of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and other new religious groups. After several years of working with her mother and on the advice of several Chicago promoters, Nubin moved to New York in the mid-1930s. She married minister Thomas A. Thorpe in 1934. The marriage was short-lived; after their divorce, Rosetta kept the last name, changing the spelling to “Tharpe” for use as her stage name. Later, in the 1940s, Tharpe was married a second time, to promoter Fosh Allen. Tharpe was signed to Decca Records in 1938 and was successful immediately. Versions of Thomas A. Dorsey’s “This Train” and “Hide Me in Thy Bosom,” released as “Rock Me,” were smash hits featuring Tharpe on guitar and Lucky Millinder’s jazz orchestra as accompaniment.

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Marie Knight Dies at 84; Gospel Vocalist Sang with Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Marie Knight Dies at 84; Gospel Vocalist Sang with Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Source: Michael Ricci

Marie Knight was best known for her gospel duets with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, including “Up Above My Head" and “Didn't It Rain." She toured with the gospel legend in the late 1940s and made a late-in-life comeback as a solo artist.

Marie Knight, a gospel singer who came to fame singing duets with gospel-music star Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the late 1940s and made a noteworthy late-in-life comeback as a solo artist, has died. She was 84.

Knight died Sunday ...

Richard Wilson
guitar, electric

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