Sister Rosetta Tharpe Video

Here's a video clip of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, playing her Gibson SG and performing Down By The Riverside on the Chicago-based television show TV Gospel Time, sometime in the early to mid-Sixties: [download video, 6mb mpeg file or stream it from youtube here] 

This clip was shot well after the peak of Tharpe's career in the 30's and the 40's, but it's the first chance I've had to see video of another one of my personal guitar heroes. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the first recording artists to play lead guitar, starting to do so in the 1920's. She started playing guitar at the age of four, billed as "Little Rosetta Nubin, the singing and guitar playing miracle," as she performed at tent revivals throughout the south.

I couldn't find out much about this clip - it's from the enhanced audio CD of Shout Sister Shout, a Tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and it was part of the weekly TV show TV Gospel Time, which aired nationally in the 1950s and 60s. Our own Kevin Nutt aired this track and a batch of other TV Gospel Time recordings on this May 2002 edition of his great show Sinner's Crossroads.

Regardless of the exact date of this performance, this was a period of Tharpe's career when she was attempting a U.S. comeback, after alienating her religious fans with her secular music, and then alienating her white fans with the blues sides she cut in the 1950s. She suffered a stroke in 1970 and died in 1973.

Comments

[Jipes]

Great video thanks a lot for pointing that out ! Sister Rosetta is such a great performer and quite a dual personnality 'cause she has one step in the Gospel and the other in the Blues. It is similar to Son House which also played a lot of Gospel while he was quite a real delta performer !

Thanks again !

[BridgeBurner]

I can't tell you the feeling of euphoria I got watching a woman in her finest Sunday dress break into a pretty ripping guitar solo. If there were more women like her around, I might actually go to church. Thanks for the video!

[mike]

A great but terribly brief clip of Tharpe a-strummin' appears in the film Amelie.

[Krys O.]

And a bit of Sharpe playing appears in one of the episodes of the Blues documentary series produced by Scorsese. This is fabulous though!

[Jeffersonic]

Jeez....that guitar solo is like a love filled bolt of lightning that tears through your heart.......

[ukraine girl]

great video!
thnks;)

[Rob]

Praise the Lord! The sister seriously shreds.
Restores my faith

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, was the BOSS,then and the boss now her voice is clear and sharpe and you can understand every word she says. May God, rest her soul
Daniel Hameed
dnlhmd96@gmail.com