Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Essential Collection [THE ART OF VINYL]

Why you'll love it

This Art of Vinyl collection gathers 16 sides on virgin vinyl pressed in the EU. "Strange Things Happening Every Day" reached No. 2 on Billboard's race records chart in 1945, the first gospel record to cross over, and some call it the first rock and roll record.

This edition

• Virgin vinyl
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Before there was Chuck Berry's duck walk or Elvis's hips, there was a woman from Arkansas playing electric guitar in church. Sister Rosetta Tharpe started recording for Decca in 1938, and her hits arrived straight away; she was one of the first to plug in, and she played with a swagger that turned gospel into something you could dance to.

The songs here show both sides of her. "Strange Things Happening Every Day," cut with pianist Sammy Price, rocks like nothing else from the mid-1940s, and "Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air," a hit with her singing partner Marie Knight, went to No. 6 on the R&B chart in 1948. "Precious Memories," "Just a Closer Walk with Thee" and "Beams of Heaven" carry the devotion, while "This Is a Mean Old World to Live In" and "Nobody's Fault but Mine" lean into the blues.

Johnny Cash and Little Richard both named her as their favourite singer as children, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted her as an Early Influence in 2018. In 1964 she played a disused railway station in Manchester in the pouring rain, with the audience on the opposite platform, which may be the most British way anyone has ever watched rock and roll being invented.

Also at Kops: more Sister Rosetta Tharpe on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On The Art of Vinyl (cat# ART153).