Rosetta Tharp - Elvis's Ticket To Fame

[Kenneth Kotsay]

Youtube has a 4 part history of Rosetta Tharp. Seems she was a heavy influence for Elvis's in his starting years to fame. She was a multi-instrumental player, heavy into Gospel music.

Listen to all 4 videos, her electric guitar playing from the early mid 30s and on sounds to me that it was the kick start to what we now know as, ROCK N Roll, guitar sound wise.

Way before guitar picker Chuck Barry came along you can that her guitar playing tells it all, sounding, a lot like rhythm & blues but again that sound we hear from her we can call, a rock n roll beat.

No Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Pat Boone, Bill Haley & the Comets and all those other white rockers of the 1950s sure didn't invent Rock n Roll.

Give credit to African Americans, after all wasn't Ike Tuner inducted in the Rock N Roll Hall of fame as the first to have a rock hit with his song back in 1950, "ROCKET 88"

Try listen to DOO WOP of the early 50s, you'll see & hear what I mean, most of it originally came from the African American artists of that day.

Sadly, Rosetta is hardly ever mentioned as being up there in rock n roll Icon Heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVzm86oB1Y

[Sonny Jenkins]

Back in the late 40s early 50s I used to spend summers with my Brother-in-law and sister. They had some kind of special radio that picked up stations all over the world. After midnight I would listen to a station in Gallatin TN that catered to black audience,,Big Joe Turner, Clyde McPhater, the Clovers, the Drifters etc. I remember they used to advertise a hair dressing,,,"if your hair is short and nappy, Conqualene can make you happy". When I went back home to Lubbock in the fall I would tell all my friends (including Buddy Holly,,LOL) about that music,,,just a couple of years later we were hearing it on our local station,,,needless to say we took to it like,,as they say,,a duck to water. It knocked people like Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Faron Young out of the water for a while,,,

[K Maul]

Possibly WLAC was that station.

[Donny Hinson]

...No Elvis, the Everly Brothers, Pat Boone, Bill Haley & the Comets and all those other white rockers of the 1950s sure didn't invent Rock n Roll. Give credit to African Americans, after all wasn't Ike Tuner inducted in the Rock N Roll Hall of fame as the first to have a rock hit with his song back in 1950, "ROCKET 88". Try listen to DOO WOP of the early 50s, you'll see & hear what I mean, most of it originally came from the African American artists of that day.

I don't know of any musicologist who thinks Rock 'n Roll started with those white artists. Blacks get a TON of recognition, generally getting credit for birthing Rock 'n Roll, and also Doo Wop (which is a subset of Rhythm & Blues). They also largely get credit for Jazz, Ragtime, Boogie-Woogie, Blues, and Gospel. While there will always be a few who think that the Rock genre started with performers like Elvis (or, even The Beatles), that's certainly not true of the cognoscenti.

Sadly, Rosetta (Tharp) is hardly ever mentioned as being up there in rock n roll Icon Heaven.

The same could be said for James Reese Europe, who seldom gets mention in the development of Jazz. And who, according to Jazz legend Eubie Blake, is the true father of Jazz, as well as the man who transformed Blacks from being minstrels to truly professional and appreciated musicians.

[Dave Mudgett]

Geez, everybody knows that Pat Boone and company didn't invent rock and roll, right? Elvis had a lot of influences, and you can hear his gospel influences right up front.

WLAC was and is in Nashville. The connection to Gallatin is that one of its main nightime music sponsors was Randy's Records (AKA Randy Woods who also started DOT Records) in Gallatin, who also heavily promoted R&B music. There were other high-power US and border-radio stations promoting this kind of music, but WLAC was very important, IMO.

Randy was also affiliated with WHIN in Gallatin, but that was not a high-power station. I suppose it might have come through on a good night, but WLAC was the big daddy for that kind of music in the center of the country.

On a good night with the right atmospherics, I could sometimes get WLAC on the skip growing up in Boston. But when I went to school in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I got it routinely at night. Almost any night, as the sun would set, the station would come in pretty good. For years, I slept with the radio on, catching whatever of the bigger radio stations I could. WWRL in New York, CKLW in Windsor, Ontario, WLS in Chicago, and of course the Boston stations. Not much in Boston like that, though. Border radio stations were pretty hard to get in Boston, but occasionally they'd drift in. I had a pretty good tuner.

BTW, they demolished the Randy's Records building in Gallatin in April. A group was trying to save it, but couldn't raise enough money to restore the building. I used to get records mail-order from Randy's long before I met my wife, who is from Gallatin. She was pretty surprised I even knew where Gallatin was.

[Mitch Drumm]

That was likely DJ John Richbourg or Hoss Allen on WLAC. I couldn't get that station in the western US. We generally listened to KOMA from Oklahoma City, which reached the west coast.

Here's the recently late Sleepy LaBeef rockin' the house on one of Rosetta's best known tunes; live on Conan O'Brien 15 or 20 years ago. What a performer he was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqPqdrsN6Yg

Here's Randy's Record Shop in Gallatin. I spent an afternoon there around 1971. They still had unused store stock copies of Buddy Holly's Decca singles at that time. I can't remember what else I bought.

Quite a small place. I can't recall if they had any LPs at all.

[Peter Huggins]

Sister Rosetta was simply a STUNNER. She had more in common with steel players than you might realize. First, she used an open tuning - usually a C# Vastapol based tuning. She started preaching in the streets with a National steel guitar! She had a Gibson L-5 by 1940 and had a pickup mounted on it by 1941. She broke many barriers in her career. She was not only an influence on Elvis (who was influenced by many gospel artists) and Chuck Berry, but also legends like T-Bone Walker. She had one of the first Les Paul guitars circa 1952-53. Later on she had a white Les Paul Custom with the SG body shape. She used small amps but I don’t think she was ever afraid to turn it up.

There are many many performances to view on YouTube. The 4-part biography is from British TV; there is also an American Masters PBS show I would suggest everyone view her performance of “Up Above My Head” from TV Gospel Time but there’s dozens of stunning, OMG performances online and they are just about all great.

Oh by the way, her last name is Tharpe, with an e.