The Sensational Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Having recorded with various jazz bands and orchestras over the years, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was well-known to jazz fans. In addition to her appearances with the Lucky Millinder and the Erskine Hawkins orchestras, heard on this disc, she performed with Cab Calloway’s Orchestra and others. In 1957 she was sponsored by the Chris Barber Band to appear with them in the U.K., and again with the Diz Disley Band to tour in Europe 1958-1960. We also have, on this album, some half dozen songs from a broadcast of her singing with the Sims-Wheeler Vintage Jazz Band in Antibes in 1960 where both had been appearing in the Jazz Festival. (Several of the songs they performed together at that festival can be viewed on YouTube, including two from this CD: “Old Time Religion” and “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.”) Her influence extended to a wider sphere than just gospel, jazz, and rhythm and blues. Several rock musicians, including Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry, have averred she was a considerable influence on them, especially in her guitar technique, and she has been called the “Godmother of Rock and Roll.” She was among the first, if not the first, gospel singer to utilize the electric guitar to accompany herself, and she was not slow to use the tremolo arm (or “vibrato arm,” as it is also called) to get a vibrato effect on her guitar, complementing the vibrat