Honoring a pioneer

When the latest nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced in October, one name stood out: Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

It was conspicuous for its relative obscurity (most of the other 18 acts were either platinum-selling hit machines or legendary pioneers) and for its belonging to a performer who performed almost nothing but gospel. Among the Rock Hall’s many inductees, only the Staple Singers have a similar reputation. In that sense, Tharpe’s nomination is encouraging.

It’s also overdue. She recorded her best-known song, “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” in 1944, and she was still performing in the early ’70s even as the diabetes that she tried to ignore slowly sapped her strength. At her peak, she was second only to Mahalia Jackson in the hearts of gospel-music enthusiasts.

But Tharpe accomplished more than popularity. She blazed trails too. Although she sometimes performed with ensembles, she could frenzify crowds with nothing more than her voice, her ebullience, and her electric guitar. That she was doing so before Chuck Berry is one reason that some people call her the godmother of rock ’n’ roll.

In addition, she was black gospel’s first crossover star. She began in the Church of God in Christ (in which her mother was an evangelist) but branched out into “the world,” incurring the wrath of many of her original fans. By 1939, she was performing in Harlem’s famous Cotton Club. The title of her 1966 live album was Live at the Hot Club de France.

Alas, Tharpe was a trailblazer in less savory ways as well. She divorced her first two husbands, and her third—a manager who seems to have married her mainly because of her ability to generate money through relentless touring—may have contributed to her death by stroke in 1973 at the age of 58.

She was also rumored to have had female lovers, an issue dealt with at some length in Gayle M. Ward’s 2006 Tharpe biography Shout, Sister, Shout! Ward herself draws no conclusions. Her interviewees, whether they pour fuel or water on the rumors, are, to a man and a woman, convinced that they’re right.

Listening to Live at the Hot Club de France, however, it’s hard to believe that Tharpe’s faith, whatever its weaknesses, was insincere. The album sizzles with evangelical fervor.

In Tharpe’s spoken introduction to “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well,” her identification with the Samaritan adulteress suggests that the intersection of sin and grace was a crossroads that she knew well. “She didn’t know who He was,” Tharpe says. “My God! If she had-a knew, she’d have been runnin’.”

She laughs. “She didn’t know that He could tell her everything—everything—that she had done. Ooh, if He was here now to tell us what we do—” She pauses, then adds sotto voce, “we’d have something to hide, wouldn’t we?”

ONE OF THARPE’S FANS IS VAN MORRISON, whose bluesy new album, Roll with the Punches (Caroline), includes Tharpe’s “How Far from God” among its 10 cover songs (several of which he has recorded before). A swinging meditation on coming to one’s senses after a period of prodigal sonship, Tharpe’s song dovetails with “Transformation,” the prettiest of the album’s five Morrison originals. “Get used to righteousness,” he sings, “’cause it makes you feel whole. / Gonna be a transformation down in your soul.”

Because Morrison has recently endorsed the Agape International Spiritual Center, an organization as New Agey as its name suggests, what he means by “righteousness” is unclear. His emotional investment in the music is not.