Sister Rosetta Tharpe

小简介
如果你看过她的”Down By The Riverside”的影音资料就会明白这个女人是多么与众不同，她站在一堆男人面前大声歌唱，男人们为她伴唱，为她欢呼鼓掌。她拿着一把铁吉他 恣意地拨弄着，热情高昂得屹立于那个男人统治的世界里。
即使在和乐团合作或和一些知名的乐手合作，她都显得那么突出，任何人在她面前都会逊色。她和爵士乐队合作演唱福音歌曲;她把摇摆乐Swings带入教堂引起宗教界人士的恐慌，她喜欢做的事在当时都是那么突兀，她就是这样一个天不怕地不怕的女人。
对于人们的恐慌，有次她对福音领域的权威Tony Heilbut说:”There’s something about the gospel blues that’ so deep the world cannot stand it。”
早期，其实有很多Blues女歌手就开始演唱福音歌曲，但没有一个人象Roese Tharpe那样让人印象深刻，除了作风特立独行外，她充满热情和无与伦比的感染力都让她与众不同，极为突出。
她于1915年出生于美国的Arkansas州，6岁时随着全家人搬到了Chicago。由于母亲是个虔诚的福音传道士，年幼时，Sister Rosetta常常陪着母亲出席一些教堂的活动和宗教仪式。从小耳濡目染，对福音音乐的理解使得她成年后的演唱极具杀伤力。她之后和教堂里的牧师结了婚，还和他的丈夫母亲组成了三重唱在全美的教堂进行巡演。
1936年，她搬到了纽约并定居下来。2年后她加入了当时有名的滑稽剧”Cab Calloway”的演出。同一年，她的第一张唱片问世了。在之后的作品里，她出色的才华引起了John Hammond的注意，1938年的这场”Spirituals to Swing Concert” 让很多歌手一夜成名，当然Rosetta也不会例外。这首”Strange Things Happening Everyday”出品于1944年12月22日，是她影响力最大的一只作品，在这个作品里，她将福音乐和蓝调完美的结合在一起，并加入了爵士乐的元素，让人听出耳油。
若要问到她到底有多伟大，有件事可以说明一切，在Johnny Cash去世后的一年，著名的节目主持人Larry King问他的女儿Rosanne Cash谁是她父亲最喜欢的歌手，答案就是Sister Rosetta Tharpe。她不仅是Johnny Cash的最爱，也是Elvis Presley，Jerry Lee Lewis的最爱。
by Jason AnkenyAlongside Willie Mae Ford Smith, Sister Rosetta Tharpe is widely acclaimed among the greatest Sanctified gospel singers of her generation; a flamboyant performer whose music often flirted with the blues and swing, she was also one of the most controversial talents of her day, shocking purists with her leap into the secular market — by playing nightclubs and theatres, she not only pushed spiritual music into the mainstream, but in the process also helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel. Tharpe was born March 20, 1921 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas; the daughter of Katie Bell Nubin, a traveling missionary and shouter in the classic gospel tradition known throughout the circuit as Mother Bell, she was a prodigy, mastering the guitar by the age of six. At the same time she attended Holiness conventions alongside her mother, performing renditions of songs including The Day Is Past and Gone and I Looked Down the Line.In time the family relocated to Chicago, where Tharpe began honing her unique style; blessed with a resonant vibrato, both her vocal phrasing and guitar style drew heavy inspiration from the blues, and she further aligned herself with the secular world with a sense of showmanship and glamour unique among the gospel performers of her era. Signing to Decca in 1938, Tharpe became a virtual overnight sensation; her first records, among them Thomas A. Dorseys Rock Me and This Train, were smash hits, and quickly she was performing in the company of mainstream superstars including Cab Calloway and Benny Goodman. She led an almost schizophrenic existence, remaining in the good graces of her core audience by recording material like Precious Lord, Beams of Heaven and End of My Journey while also appealing to her growing white audience by performing rearranged, uptempo spirituals including Didnt It Rain and Down by the Riverside.During World War II, Tharpe was so popular that she was one of only two black gospel acts — the Golden Gate Quartet being the other — to record V-Discs for American soldiers overseas; she also toured the nation in the company of the Dixie Hummingbirds, among others. In 1944, she began recording with boogie-woogie pianist Sammy Price; their first collaboration, Strange Things Happening Every Day, even cracked Billboards race records Top Ten, a rare feat for a gospel act and one which she repeated several more times during the course of her career. In 1946 she teamed with the Newark-based Sanctified shouter Madame Marie Knight, whose simple, unaffected vocals made her the perfect counterpoint for Tharpes theatrics; the duos first single, Up Above My Head, was a huge hit, and over the next few years they played to tremendous crowds across the church circuit.However, in the early 50s Tharpe and Knight cut a handful of straight blues sides; their fans were outraged, and although Knight soon made a permanent leap into secular music — to little success — Tharpe remained first and foremost a gospel artist, although her credibility and popularity were seriously damaged. Not only did her record sales drop off and her live engagements become fewer and farther between, but many purists took Tharpes foray into the mainstream as a personal affront; the situation did not improve, and she spent over a year touring clubs in Europe, waiting for the controversy to die down. Tharpes comeback was slow but steady, and by 1960 she had returned far enough into the audiences good graces to appear at the Apollo Theatre alongside the Caravans and James Cleveland. While not a household name like before, she continued touring even after suffering a major stroke in 1970, dying in Philadelphia on October 9, 1973.