Listening – Magoosh TOEFL Lecture #2

Reading TOEFL - Magoosh - Biography - #01

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Elvis Presley is arguably the most famous rock-and-roll musician in history. While it was his untimely death that crystallized his legacy in the American psyche, his musical output was prodigious and ultimately changed the narrative of American popular music. However, there were many rock-and-roll artists recording contemporaneously with Elvis, including Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly, all of whom helped steer the course of popular music’s evolution. While Elvis may be more popular, with thousands annually visiting his home, each of these other singers could be considered the father of rock and roll. But the even less widely known godmother of rock and roll is an African-American gospel singer named Sister Rosetta Tharpe. While she came before rock and roll, her unique style, which featured the blending of musical genres and virtuosic guitar picking, influenced many of the better known early rock-and-roll musicians.

Tharpe was born in 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, a town in the southern U.S. Her parents, both cotton pickers, were members of the local Church of God in Christ (COGIC). The COGIC denomination was Pentecostal, a Christian movement popular among African Americans at the time. Pentecostalism emphasized the influence of the Holy Spirit, an entity believed to take over parishioners, causing them to shout and dance, commonly called “feeling the spirit.” This emotional aspect and release of control allowed more lively musical expression to become part of Pentecostal services. Tharpe’s mother, herself a musician, encouraged her daughter to sing and play the guitar. A musical prodigy, by the age of four, Tharpe was singing and playing in area churches as Little Rosetta Nubin, Nubin being her maiden name. When Tharpe was six, she and her mother moved to Chicago.

In Chicago, Rosetta was exposed to the blues, although gospel continued to exert a greater musical influence on her. She and her mother joined a local COGIC church and performed there. From that base, they also traveled around the country performing at Pentecostal tent revivals, large affairs with a mix of entertainment and worship. Little Rosetta Nubin learned the art of entertainment at these revivals, soon becoming a headliner for the shows, and her fame grew.

After a short marriage to Reverend Tommy Thorpe, a COGIC preacher who had traveled with her on the tent revival circuit, Rosetta and her mother moved to New York City. There, Tharpe began a conscious process of appealing to a broader public. Jazz was popular in the New York nightlife scene, and Tharpe procured an engagement singing at a well-known nightclub. There, management would give her secular songs to sing, and when she sang Christian songs, she’d subtly change the lyrics to cut spiritual references. This change from being purely a gospel singer did not sit well with many of her old fans, who felt that by crossing over, Tharpe had abandoned them.

◙ (A) Tharpe’s first hit recording was “Rock Me,” sung with the Lucky Millinder jazz band. The song was based on an old spiritual, a type of religious song that had been sung by African-American slaves. ◙ (B) However, when Tharpe sang the song, she changed the lyric “Jesus hear me praying” to “Won’t you hear me praying,” making the song less religious and open to more interpretation. ◙ (C) Many of Tharpe’s church fans eventually forgave her and came back. ◙ (D) By the age of twenty-five, Tharpe was gospel’s first genuine superstar.

Later on, Tharpe left the jazz scene and returned to gospel full time. She worked with multiple smaller groups. One of the groups she collaborated with was the Jordanaires, a white gospel and country quartet that also performed with Elvis. Through their collaboration, Tharpe was able to add country music influences to her music.

So great was her popularity that in 1951 Tharpe was able to sell 25,000 tickets to her third marriage, filling up the baseball stadium in Washington, D.C. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Tharpe’s fame continued to grow, allowing her to record music and sing on the radio, culminating in a televised tour through Europe. However, due to health issues and changing cultural times, Tharpe soon dropped out of the spotlight. Even so, her legacy of mixing uniquely American musical genres and expert guitar playing continued to influence rock-and-roll legends.

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