The history of female blues guitar pioneers isn’t exactly voluminous. Indeed, it doesn’t extend much beyond Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her own influential forebear, Memphis Minnie. Forging a musical bridge between gospel and the blues, the Arkansas-born Tharpe influenced a disparate array of later music icons, from pioneering rockers like Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to R&B stalwarts Aretha Franklin and Isaac Hayes. Yet Tharpe’s blues muse was almost impossible to separate from her original calling as a gospel singer.
Born Rosetta Nubin in 1915, she began singing and playing guitar at four, backing her evangelist mother in tent revivals across the South. But by her teens, Tharpe also developed a passion for jazz and blues that helped launch a recording career in the '30s. But while her singing and playing would inspire collaborations with the likes of Cab Calloway and Benny Goodman, her secular career – which later included a successful blues partnership with fellow gospel singer Marie Knight – caused a rift with gospel audiences that never really healed. During the '60s blues boom, Tharpe’s career had a brief upswing, resulting in this rare television appearance where she sings the gospel standard “Down By the Riverside,” accompanying herself on a then-new, fully tricked-out Les Paul/SG Custom with its distinctive row of humbuckers.
