From Spirituals to Swing: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Gospel Crossover

Abstract

Rosetta Tharpe was gospel music's first national star, one of its earliest recording artists, and its pre-eminent crossover figure of the 1940s, the decade of gospel's emergence as "popular" music. Such popularization of gospel held special significance for Tharpe as an African American female musician who negotiated the different modes of femininity available to her as, alternately, a popular or gospel entertainer. Although Tharpe earned scorn in some quarters for making music that confused the sacred/secular division, she took pleasure in, and found agency through, a constant shuttling between spheres.

Street Queens: New Orleans Brass Bands and the Problem of Intersectionality

“…6 Hip-hop also provides an arena where black women lift the mask of dissemblance (Harris-Perry 2011). Drawing from hip-hop and other contemporary cultural forms, the Pinettes clearly exercise their ability to move away from prescribed images in popular romantic ballads where the female authorial voice's expression of desire is circumscribed by bourgeois ideals of female virginity and passivity (here I'm using the excellent wording of Gayle Wald [2003]). Instead of simply replacing the Rebirth lyrics with LeVert's original lyrics, the Pinettes maintain a claim to sexuality with the insistence that the listener remove his or her garments.…”

From Beatles Fans to Beat Groups

“…Contrastingly, there is more literature examining all-female bands and instrumentalists from swing, blues, gospel, punk, and riot grrrl (Pauwke Berkers 2012;Julia Downes 2012;Kay Dreyfus 1999;Jerma Jackson 2004;Maria V. Johnson 1998;Sherrie Tucker 2000;Gayle Wald 2003). Therefore, a gap remains in documenting the all-girl bands that formed during a pivotal time in rock music history-one heralded by the Beatles' worldwide success and often called the "British Invasion" in the Anglo-American context (Katherine Charlton 2008, 118 -128).…”

A Conscious Citizen: Sam Cooke, Racial Performativity, and the Crisis of Crossover Music

“…A primary reference point is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a singer and guitar player who became the first gospel performer to sign a record deal-this at a time when gospel itself was seen as too upbeat for the church. 263 In her 1941 recording of "Rock Me," a version of a Thomas Dorsey composition, 264 Tharpe secularizes the sacred; backed by a jazz band, she resignifies the chorus of "rock me" not as a call to a protective God but to a pleasurable lover. 265 Ray Charles, Cooke's immediate predecessor and a co-creator of soul music, did the same; his first R&B chart-topper, the love tune "I Got a Woman," directly ripped off the melody of a spiritual, "It Must Be Jesus."…”