Since the Grammy Awards have just passed, I started thinking about all the relatively unknown talents through the years, at least in the present day.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was definitely known back in the day, and her day was the 1940's, where she achieved fame as not only an acclaimed gospel singer, but quite the accomplished guitarist.

According to biography.com:

"She could play a guitar like nobody else you've ever seen," her friend Roxie Moore said. "People would flock to see her. Everybody loved her." Ira Tucker Jr., the son of the legendary gospel singer Ira Tucker of the Dixie Hummingbirds, put it simply: "She was a rock star."

Apparently, she was more than just popular, she was groundbreaking, seriously impacting American music history by pioneering the guitar technique that would eventually evolve into the rock and roll style played by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Eric Clapton.

In fact, rock and roll innovators such as Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Presley bowed down to Tharpe, as stated in an article at popmatters.com.

Why haven't most of us even heard of her?

I hope this blog at least rectifies that glaring oversight a little.

But you can read a lot more about this amazing woman in Gayle F. Wald’s biography, Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

With Shout!, Wald aimed to restore Sister Rosetta to her rightful place in music history.

“What does rock ‘n’ roll look like if we tell the story from the point of view of this black gospel singer who rocked the church?” she asks. “How do we understand and imagine who rocks out on electric guitar?”

“Because that’s the thing that struck me most: I associated that kind of prowess and confidence with a male player, and these days, despite people like Prince, a white male player. So it was about busting that myth. But also saying: Wow, if you include her in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, it looks a little bit different.”

Yes, it surely does.

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