AA Afro-American (Washington, Baltimore, or Richmond edition)
CD Chicago Defender
GS Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Limelight Editions, 1997).
GAG Horace Clarence Boyer, with photography by Lloyd Yearwood, The Golden Age of Gospel (1995; reprint, Urbana and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2000).
1. Brian Greer, “ ‘A Reign of Terror’: Little Rock’s Last Lynching Was in 1927, But the Terrible Memories Linger,” Arkansas Times, July 28, 2000.
2. Census of the United States, 1880, Princeton Township, Dallas County, Arkansas (Enumeration District 66); Census of the United States, 1900, Princeton Township, Dallas County, Arkansas (Enumeration District 20).
3. The Hustler, Special Pictorial Magazine Edition, 1, no. 19, July 14, 1905, 12.
4. Bill Sayger, A Cotton Plant and Dark Corner Remembrancer (Brinkley, AR: private printing, 2002), 5–7.
5. Hustler, 1–2.
6. Tera W. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 175.
7. “Weird Babel of Tongues,” Los Angeles Daily Times, April 18, 1906.
8. C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 81.
9. Acts 2:4 (New International Version).
10. Anthea D. Butler, “Church Mothers and Migration in the Church of God in Christ,” in Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture, ed. Beth Barton Schweiger and Donald G. Mathews (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 196, 206.
11. Butler, “Church Mothers and Migration,” 201.
12. Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Random House, 1987); Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 354. For more on the development of COGIC and related class tensions within black communities, see Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, 177, and Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 378–403.
13. Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 83.
14. Litwack, Trouble in Mind, 378–403. The quotation is from page 387.
15. Most dictionaries also regard “Holy Roller” as a pejorative used to describe Pentecostals of any race or ethnicity. I use the term when it is used in print or in interviews. Many of the sources I interviewed use “Holy Roller” as a term of identification thought to be understandable to non-Pentecostals—that is, as Rosetta sometimes used it, without disparaging intention.
16. Butler, “Church Mothers and Migration,” 196.
1. Mahalia Jackson with Evan McLeod Wylie, Movin’ On Up (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1966), 62.
2. Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 232.
3. Richard Wright, “Ethnographical Aspects of Chicago’s Black Belt,” December 11, 1935, The Illinois Writers’ Project / “Negro in Illinois” papers, Box 53, Folder 1, Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature.
4. Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom, 205.
5. “And Churches” [n.a., n.d.], The Illinois Writers’ Project / “Negro in Illinois” papers, Box 45, Folder 1, Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, 5.
6. Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 180.
7. François Postif, Jazz Me Blues: Interviews et portraits de musicians de jazz et de blues (Paris: Outre Mesure, 1999), 15–16.
8. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “One Morning Soon,” The Gospel Truth (Mercury SR 60080).
9. Pearl Williams-Jones, “A Brief Historical and Analytical Survey of Afro-American Gospel Music,” in We’ll Understand It Better By and By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers, ed. Bernice Johnson Reagon (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 37.
10. Ellistine P. Holly, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” in Notable Black American Women, ed. Jessie Carney Smith (Detroit: Gale Publishing, 1992), 1120.
11. Joyce Marie Jackson, “The Changing Nature of Gospel Music: A Southern Case Study,” African American Review 29, no. 2 (1995): 190.
12. Jules Schwerin, Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 30.
13. Michael Corcoran, “Holy Roller: Arizona Dranes,” Blues & Rhythm: The Gospel Truth 185 (2003): 14–15; Ken Romanowski, album notes, Arizona Dranes: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, 1926–1929 (DOCD-5186).
14. George D. Lewis, “Spirituals of Today” [n.d.], The Illinois Writers’ Project / “Negro in Illinois” papers, Box 49, Folder 24, Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, 1.
15. In “Negro Churches (Denominational),” another New Deal–era study, Fenton Johnson quotes Elder Lucy Smith. “We didn’t buy no second-hand white church,” she is reputed to have said, “but built one from the ground up,” supposedly for sixty-five thousand dollars. See Johnson [n.d.], The Illinois Writers’ Project / “Negro in Illinois” papers, Box 18, Folder 3, Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature.
16. Telia U. Anderson, “ ‘Calling on the Spirit’: The Performativity of Black Women’s Faith in the Baptist Church Spiritual Traditions and Its Radical Possibilities for Resistance,” in African-American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader, ed. Harry J. Elam Jr. and David Krasner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 114–131.
1. Nathaniel Harrington, “Benny Goodman Bids for ‘Sister Tharpe’: Wants Singer Out on Coast with Him,” CD, July 29, 1939.
2. Harrington, “Benny Goodman Bids for ‘Sister Tharpe’ ”; Marvel Cooke, “Holy Roller Singer Toast of Broadway: Sister Rosetta Tharpe Swings Spirituals for Sophisticated Cotton Club Clientele,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, March 4, 1939.
3. Art Franklin, “Lucky Millinder and Rosetta Tharpe,” Swing magazine, October 1941, 15; “ ‘Sister Tharpe’ Thinks Her Old Role Was the Tops,” CD, August 19, 1939.
4. Harrington, “Benny Goodman Bids for ‘Sister Tharpe.’ ” For the description of Calloway’s discovery of Rosetta in New York, see George D. Lewis, “Spirituals of Today” [n.d.], The Illinois Writers’ Project / “Negro in Illinois” papers, Box 49, Folder 24, Chicago Public Library, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, 14. Leighla W. Lewis, in “Sister Tharpe Swings Hymns at Cotton Club,” Washington AA, January 14, 1939, reports that Calloway heard Rosetta on “one of his trips South.”
5. Cooke, “Holy Roller Singer Toast of Broadway.”
6. Ibid.
7. Esther 1:10–20, New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition, ed. Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 710–711.
8. Cab Calloway and Bryant Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), 88.
9. Edward Kennedy Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company), 419–420.
10. Calloway and Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me, 78; Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, 77, 80.
11. Jim Haskins, The Cotton Club (New York: New American Library, 1984), 146.
12. Haskins, Cotton Club, 113–118.
13. “ ‘Sister Tharpe’ Thinks Her Old Role Was the Tops,” CD.
14. Harrington, “Benny Goodman Bids for ‘Sister Tharpe.’ ”
15. Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
16. Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 3–41.
17. Paul Allen Anderson, Deep River: Music and Memory in Harlem Renaissance Thought (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 231, 233.
18. Count Basie, as told to Albert Murray, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie (New York: Random House, 1985), 221; “Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison Remembers ‘From Spirituals to Swing’ and Count Basie—1999,” From Spirituals to Swing, album notes (Vanguard 169/71–2), 27; John Hammond with Irving Townsend, John Hammond on Record: An Autobiography (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 203.
19. Herb, “Apollo, N.Y.,” Variety, July 19, 1939, 38, 46.
20. “Singer Swings Same Songs in Church and Night Club,” Life, August 28, 1939, 37.
21. Herb, “Cotton Club, N.Y.,” Variety, May 8, 1940, 50.
22. “Sister Tharpe Gets Reprimand from Her Husband for Not Wearing Hat,” New York Sun, September 5, 1939. Lewis, in “Sister Tharpe Swings Hymns at Cotton Club,” implies that Tommy Tharpe had been in New York since January 1939.
23. “ ‘Sister Tharpe’ Thinks Her Old Role Was the Tops,” CD.
24. “The Church Stands for the Highest Values in Your Community,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 11, 1939. See also Jerma A. Jackson, Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 113–120, for an extended discussion of the Pittsburgh Courier debates.
25. Thomas A. Dorsey, “Gospel Songwriter Attacks All Hot Bands’ Swinging Spirituals,” CD, February 8, 1941.
26. Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church: The Folklore Writings of Zora Neale Hurston (Berkeley: Turtle Island Foundation, 1981), 103.
27. Arna Bontemps, “Rock, Church, Rock!,” Common Ground (Autumn 1942): 80.
1. Whitney Balliett, “Night Clubs,” The New Yorker, October 9, 1971, 75.
2. Josephson opened a second club, Café Society Uptown, on October 8, 1940, but Rosetta played at the downtown club. Nevertheless, the uptown and downtown performers were professionally friendly.
3. David W. Stowe, “The Politics of Café Society,” Journal of American History 84, no. 4 (March 1998): 1388.
4. Balliett, “Night Clubs,” 76–77.
5. “Accuse Sister Tharpe of Stealing Old Songs,” CD, January 11, 1941; “Night Club Soulsaver,” photograph caption, Washington AA, January 11, 1941.
6. David Albert “Panama” Francis, interview by Milt Hinton, Smithsonian Institution, Jazz Oral History Project, Reel 2.
7. Bill Doggett, interview by Dave Booth, December 1988. CD recording of interview courtesy of Lex Gillespie.
8. Billy Jones, “Stars,” CD, May 17, 1941, reports that “Rosetta Tharpe, the hymn swinger, has signed up with Lucky Millinder’s band,” but Roxie Moore’s memory puts the date of the actual agreement several months earlier. It’s possible that Rosetta, who appeared in February and March in the musical comedy Tropicana, signed with Millinder in February but announced the deal in May.
9. Doggett, interview by Booth.
10. Cab Calloway and Bryant Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976), 71; Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964), 77.
11. Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of Blues (New York: Amistad, 2004), 93.
12. “Girls, If You Are Heavy the Apollo Will Admit You ‘Free,’ ” CD, December 13, 1941.
13. “ ‘Soundie’ Using Big Name Bands,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, November 22, 1941.
14. “A Musical Trend Comes to the Cross Roads of Public Favor,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 2, 1941.
15. Dick Carter, “On the Air,” review of Lucky Millinder at the Savoy Ballroom, New York, WNEW, Sunday, January 11, 1942, 4:00–4:30 p.m., Billboard, January 24, 1942, 12.
16. The recording ban went into effect on August 1, 1942, with the union demanding royalties for its members each time a recording was played on the radio or a jukebox. Although Decca settled with the AFM within a year, the dispute lasted for more than two years.
17. Francis, interview by Hinton.
18. Review of Lucky Millinder (Decca 18386), New York Times, June 28, 1942; Bill Gottlieb, “Swing Sessions,” Washington Post, July 5, 1942. Rosetta was called “the prize of Lucky’s band” in “Harlem to Broadway,” CD, September 26, 1942.
19. “Fort Custer Victory Ball Lures Visitors,” CD, May 3, 1942; Elizabeth Galbreath, “Typovision,” CD, May 23, 1942.
20. Doggett, interview by Booth.
21. Tony Russell, “Clarkesdale Piccolo Blues: Jukebox Hits in Black Taverns 30 Years Ago,” Jazz & Blues (November 1971): 30. See also Wald, Escaping the Delta, 98–100.
22. “Ink Spots Draw 10,600,” Baltimore AA, May 29, 1943; “Ink Spots Draw 10,000 in St. Louis,” CD, June 12, 1943; “Bands Up Philly Theater Take; T. Dorsey Record Still Stands; Heidt, Millinder, Osborne Next,” Billboard, January 23, 1943, 21.
23. “Lucky Charges Sister Tharpe Pulled Sneak: Everybody Upset When Singer Quits Without Notice,” Down Beat, September 15, 1943, 6.
24. Jack Schiffman, son of Apollo Theater owner Frank Schiffman, refers to Allen as the manager of Washington’s Howard Theater, but I have been unable to confirm this. See Jack Schiffman, Uptown: The Story of Harlem’s Apollo Theatre (New York: Cowles Book Company, 1971), 101.
25. Rosetta Tharpe v. Thomas Tharpe, document 372, no. 44, decree issued in District Court of Douglas County, Nebraska, May 7, 1943.
26. “Savoy Ballroom Closed: Charges of Vice Filed by Police Department and Army,” New York Times, April 25, 1943; Malcolm X, Autobiography, 116.
27. Eric Hobsbawm, “The People’s Swing,” in Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1998), 277.
28. I Shall Be a Witness, Rosetta Tharpe and the Heavenly Queens Choir, RGB 3024, digital sound cassette, Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.
29. “Sister Tharpe with Ink Spots,” CD, December 25, 1943; “Sister Tharpe Tops at Howard,” CD, January 22, 1944; Ted Yates, “Around Harlemtown,” CD, December 11, 1943.
30. “Louis Jordan, Dusty Fletcher and Sister Tharpe Take Regal,” CD, January 8, 1944.
31. Sammy Price, What Do They Want?: A Jazz Autobiography, ed. Caroline Richmond (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 52.
32. Sammy Price, interview by Dan Morgenstern, January 21, 1980, Institute for Jazz Studies, Jazz Oral History Project, 43–45.
33. Guido van Rijn speculates that Rosetta’s inspiration for “Strange Things” was a ballad by Bud Ezell with the words “strange things a-happening in this land” in the chorus. Guido van Rijn, Roosevelt’s Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 176.
34. Michael W. Harris, The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 237–238.
35. Dewey Phillips, Red Hot & Blue: Dewey Phillips Live Radio Broadcasts from 1952–1964, CD, Memphis Archives (MA 7016).
36. Jerry Lee Lewis, interview by Peter Guralnick, 2005. Personal collection of Peter Guralnick.
37. Peter Guralnick, personal correspondence with the author, December 28, 2005, with material from Guralnick’s notes from an interview with Johnny Cash, February 8, 1979; Johnny Cash, Man in Black (New York: Warner Books, 1975), 73–74; Rosanne Cash, interview by Larry King on Larry King Live, June 10, 2005.
38. Carl Perkins, interview by Peter Guralnick, circa February 8 or February 9, 1979.
1. Pearl Bailey, The Raw Pearl (New York: Pocket Books, 1969), 6–7.
1. “Stars to Sing May 12,” display advertisement, CD, May 4, 1946; “Want to Hear Sister Tharpe?” CD, May 11, 1946.
2. Rosetta told Anthony Heilbut that Marie was three years younger. See GS, 193. Horace Clarence Boyer writes that Marie was born in 1918. See GAG, 158. Jerma A. Jackson gives Marie’s date of birth as 1923, the year I find most likely. See Jerma A. Jackson, Singing in My Soul: Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 121.
3. Jackson, Singing in My Soul, 121–122.
4. François Postif, Jazz Me Blues: Interviews et portraits de musicians de jazz et de blues (Paris: Editions Outre Mesure, 1999), 16.
5. “Sister Tharpe on Tour with Singers,” CD, July 13, 1946.
6. Say Amen, Somebody, videocassette, directed by George T. Nierenberg (Santa Monica, CA: Xenon Entertainment Group, 1997).
7. Nat [Hentoff], “Caught in the Act,” Down Beat, April 6, 1955, 4.
8. Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 59–62.
9. Peter Waltrous, “Back to Basics, Little Richard Is Happy at Last,” New York Times, December 8, 1992; Charles White, The Life and Times of Little Richard, the Quasar of Rock (New York: Harmony Books, 1984), 17.
10. Etta James and David Ritz, Rage to Survive: The Etta James Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995), 75.
11. Willa Ward-Royster, as told to Toni Rose, How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World-Famous Ward Singers (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 68–69. Ward-Royster writes that the convention took place in 1943, but Nick Salvatore dates it as 1952. See Nick Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 202–203 and 359–360, note 53.
12. Ward-Royster, How I Got Over, 68–69.
13. David Ritz, Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye (1985; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), 14; Salvatore, Singing in a Strange Land, 202–203; James and Ritz, Rage to Survive, 76.
14. Jerry Wexler, “O-o-h, Sistuh! Rosetta ’n’ Her Gitar Grab Bible Belt Moola,” Billboard, April 9, 1949, 3, 18.
15. Jay Lustig, “A Musical Tribute to a Gospel Legend.” Newark Star-Ledger, May 8, 2005.
16. “Sister Tharpe With Rosettes; Madame Marie Knight Out,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 26, 1949.
1. C. A. Bustard, “Local Roots Show in Rosetta Tharpe’s Music,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 1, 1981. On Richmond in general, see Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball, “Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond,” Journal of Urban History 21, no. 3 (March 1995): 296–346.
2. GAG, 152–153.
3. Sarah Brooks later married and became Sarah Roots; Lottie Henry became Lottie Smith. For clarity’s sake, throughout this chapter, I use their maiden names.
4. The term “quartet” commonly referred to all small gospel vocal harmony groups. Sometimes “quartets” had five or even six members.
5. GAG, 169–170; GS, 356.
6. In addition to my interview with Sarah Brooks (Roots) and Lottie Henry (Smith), I am drawing on Oreen Johnson (Craddock) and Barbara Johnson (Henry), interview by Lynn Abbott, March 10, 1983. Personal collection of Lynn Abbott.
7. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, advertisement for Second Anniversary, Mosque Auditorium, Richmond, Richmond AA, November 18, 1950.
8. Review of Rosetta Tharpe and the Rosettes, “Silent Night” and “White Christmas” (Decca 48119), Billboard, November 26, 1949, 168.
9. Jody Rosen, White Christmas: The Story of an American Song (New York: Scribner, 2002), 137.
10. “On Television,” New York Times, January 1, 1950.
11. “Mahalia Jackson Rejects 10G Bid,” Richmond AA, June 10, 1950.
1. Tim Stinson, “A Vanishing Breed: Welcome to the Drugstore,” November 2003, www.mondiale.co.uk/tpus/contributors/timnov.html.
2. Jerry Wexler, “O-o-h, Sistuh! Rosetta ’n’ Her Gitar Grab Bible Belt Moola,” Billboard, April 9, 1949, 3.
3. The quotations from Henry Whitehead and Dick Heller are from Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold History of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 11 and 305, footnote 13.
4. “28,000 See Elder Michaux Baptize 150 at Stadium” Baltimore AA, November 25, 1948; George D. Tyler, “Gateway to Gayway,” Baltimore AA, November 24, 1949.
5. Smallwood Edmond Williams, This Is My Story: A Significant Life Struggle (Washington, DC: Wm. Willoughby Publishers, 1981), 39, 190.
6. Many sources say that Russell Morrison managed the Ink Spots, but I have not been able to verify this claim. It may be that once he became Rosetta’s manager, Russell was retroactively assumed to have managed other groups. It is possible he once served as valet to Lucky Millinder. See Marv Goldberg, More Than Words Can Say: The Ink Spots and Their Music (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, 1998), 78.
7. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952; reprint, New York: Vintage International, 1995), 7.
8. “Mediation Warms as Air Conditioning Fails,” Washington Post, July 3, 1951.
9. Rosetta Tharpe, The Wedding Ceremony of Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Decca DL 5382); “15,000 Attend Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Wedding,” Richmond AA, July 14, 1951; “20,000 Watch Wedding of Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” Ebony, October 1951, 27–30.
10. “Sister Rosetta Tharpe Weds,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 19, 1951.
11. “Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Wed Russell Morrison: Costly Gowns, Fireworks, Concert Added Features,” Washington AA, June 30, 1951.
12. “Sister Rosetta Tharpe Weds,” Los Angeles Sentinel.
13. “15,000 Attend Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Wedding,” Richmond AA.
14. Marie and Dolly stayed close companions. Later, Dolly formed the Gates of Prayer Church in New York, where Marie was ordained a minister in 1973. For many years, they shared a Harlem apartment.
15. Alan Lomax, album notes, Blessed Assurance: Gospel Hymns Sung by Sister Rosetta Tharpe with the Rosettes and Organ Accompaniment (Decca DL 5354).
16. Howard Grut, “Sweet Religion, Hallilu!—At Only $2.50 a Seat,” Melody Maker, September 6, 1952, 9; Derrick Stewart-Baxter, “Preachin’ the Blues,” Jazz Journal International 5, no. 7 (July 1952): 17; “20,000 Watch Wedding of Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” Ebony.
1. Allen Churchill, “Tin Pan Alley’s Git-tar Blues,” New York Times, July 15, 1951.
2. The quotations from Owen Bradley and Bentley Cummins are courtesy Randy Fox, from an e-mail forwarded to the author by Dawn Oberg, February 16, 2004.
3. Ray Charles and David Ritz, Brother Ray: Ray Charles’ Own Story, 3rd paperback edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 2004), 43.
4. Ben Grevatt, “On the Beat,” Billboard, March 9, 1959, 8.
5. Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 3–4.
6. Rob Bowman, “Profiles in Black and White: O. B. McClinton: Country Music, That’s My Thing,” Journal of Country Music 14, no. 2 (1992): 23.
1. Guido van Rijn, The Truman and Eisenhower Blues: African American Blues and Gospel Songs, 1945–1960 (London: Continuum, 2004), 93–94.
2. Dick Kleiner, “Spiritual to Pops is Tough Switch,” Sheboygan Press, January 27, 1960, 24.
3. “Clara Ward . . . Gospel Singer,” Our World, December 1953, 38.
4. Lee Hildebrand and Opal Nations, CD notes, Sister Wynona Carr, Dragnet for Jesus (Specialty SPCD 7016–2).
5. Jose, review of Rosetta Tharpe and Marie Knight at the Village Vanguard, New York, Variety February 16, 1955, 55.
6. Nat [Hentoff], “Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Marie Knight: Village Vanguard, New York,” Down Beat, April 6, 1955, 4.
7. “Teeners Wielding New Influence on Singles Record Market,” 1956 article cited in Galen Gart, First Pressings: The History of Rhythm & Blues, vol. 6, 1956 (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Publications, 1991), 4.
8. Quote from “The Murder of Emmett Till,” The American Experience, PBS on-line, www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/p_till.html.
9. Alice Walker, “Nineteen Fifty-Five,” in You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981).
10. “Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Star on CBS-TV,” Jet, March 1, 1956, 66.
11. Marvel Cooke, “Holy Roller Singer Toast of Broadway,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, March 4, 1939.
12. From a 1957 Billboard article cited in Galen Gart, First Pressings: The History of Rhythm & Blues, vol. 7, 1957 (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Publications, 1993), 146.
1. The epigraph is from Marian McPartland, “Mary Lou: Marian McPartland Salutes One Pianist Who Remains Modern and Communicative,” Down Beat, October 17, 1957, 12.
2. Frederic V. Grunfeld, The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of Guitar and Guitarists (London: Macmillan, 1969) 6, 11; Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) 185.
3. McPartland, “Mary Lou,” 12. See also Nichole T. Rustin, “ ‘Mary Lou Williams Plays Like a Man!’ Gender, Genius, and Difference in Black Music Discourse,” South Atlantic Quarterly 104, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 445–62.
4. Ralph Gleason, “A Gospel Singer; A Secular Guitar,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 30, 1964.
5. Etta James, foreword to Bob Merlis and Davin Seay, Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America, 1930–1975 (New York: Billboard Books, 2002), n.p.
1. Bob Dawbarn, “Sister Rosetta Makes a Flying Start,” Melody Maker, November 30, 1957, p. 5. The phrase “a shambles of slurring sound” is from this article, page 5.
2. Desmond Wilcox, “They Call Her ‘Holy Roller’: Rosetta Flies in to Rock,” [London] Daily Mirror, November 22, 1957.
3. Burt Korall, “Rosetta . . .,” Melody Maker, November 23, 1957, 5.
4. Wilcox, “They Call Her ‘Holy Roller.’ ”
5. Ibid.
6. Marybeth Hamilton, “Sexuality, Authenticity and the Making of the Blues Tradition,” Past and Present 169 (November 2000): 138; George Melly, Owning Up: The Trilogy (London: Penguin, 2000), 394.
7. Chris Barber, “U.S. Jazz Scene,” Melody Maker, May 20, 1961, 3.
8. Melly, Owning Up, 491.
9. Rob Bowman, DVD notes, The American Folk Blues Festival, 1962–1966, vol. 1 (Reelin’ in the Years Productions, 2003); Val Wilmer, Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This: My Life in the Jazz World (London: The Women’s Press, 1989), 36–37.
10. Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 163.
11. Theo Zwicky, speech presented April 19, 1964, at the New Jazz Club, Zurich. Printed in New Jazz Club Zurich newsletter [n.d.], 44.
12. I am creatively paraphrasing based on the following: Jacques Demêtre, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe est à Paris,” Jazz Hot 129 (Février 1958): 16–17; Baget-Garriga, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe en Barcelona,” Publicacíon Club de Ritmo Granollers 12, no. 142 (Febrero de 1958): 4; “Rosetta Vous Parle,” Jazz Magazine 35 (1958): 15–17; Maurice Berman, “I’ve Never Been a Jazz Singer,” Melody Maker, April 19, 1958, 7; Valerie Wilmer, “Queen of the Holy Rollers,” Jazz News, April 8, 1960, 6; Wilcox, “They Call Her ‘Holy Roller.’ ”
13. Chris Barber, interview by Dave Booth, June 28, 1984. Audiotape courtesy of Dave Booth.
14. Korall, “Rosetta. . . .,” 5.
15. Madeleine Gautier, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe à l’Alhambra,” Bulletin du Hot Club de France 75 (Février 1958): 32; J. D. [Jacques Demêtre], “Sister Rosetta Tharpe à l’Alhambra,” Jazz Hot 129 (Février 1958): 34.
16. Bowman, DVD notes, The American Folk Blues Festival.
17. Tyler Stovall, “The Fire This Time: Black American Expatriates and the Algerian War,” Yale French Studies 98 (2000): 182–200.
18. Terry Cryer, One in the Eye (West Yorkshire: Yorkshire Art Circus, 1992), 59–60.
19. Pearl Bailey, The Raw Pearl (New York: Pocket Books, 1969), 112; Neil M. C. Sinclair, The Tiger Bay Story (Cardiff: Dragon and Tiger Enterprises, 1997), 68. Val Wilmer originally made the point to me about the importance of black American–English West Indian connections and provided the passage from Sinclair.
20. Melly, Owning Up, 515.
21. Bob Dawbarn, “Rosetta’s Secret Is Sincerity,” Melody Maker, April 5, 1958, 5.
22. Melly, Owning Up, 544.
23. GS, 194.
24. Wilmer, “Queen of the Holy Rollers.”
1. “Gospel Singer Clara Ward a Hit on Nitery Circuit,” Jet, December 14, 1961, 6.
2. William Hamilton Jr., “Sister Rosetta Tharpe,” Jazz News, November 1957, 6.
3. Martin Williams, album notes, The Gospel Truth: All New Recordings of Great Gospel Hits (Verve V/V6–8439).
4. Desmond Wilcox, “They Call Her ‘Holy Roller’: Rosetta Flies in to Rock,” [London] Daily Mirror, November 22, 1957.
5. Steve Morse, “The Summers of Love,” [Syracuse] Post-Standard, August 15, 1992.
6. Derrick Stewart-Baxter, “Blues on Record,” Jazz Journal 12 (May 1964): 17.
7. Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002), 187.
8. Precise dates for TV Gospel Time episodes are difficult to establish. My estimate of 1962 comes from Dave Hepburn, “Big Bonanza in Gospel Music,” Sepia, March 1963, page 15, which notes that a show called TV Gospel Time began “only last September.”
9. “TV Gospel Time Moves from New York to Memphis,” CD, February 2, 1963; Hepburn, “Big Bonanza in Gospel Music,” 15.
10. GS, 194.
11. Hughes Panassié, Bulletin du Hot Club de France, April 1968, 30.
12. GS, 189.
13. GAG gives the date as 1969, but Leiser’s timeline and Roxie Moore’s memory point toward 1968.
14. GS, 195.
15. Mark Bricklin, “Gospel Singers and Church of God Official Mourn Rosetta’s Mother,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 27, 1968.
16. Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Singing in My Soul (Savoy MG-14224). Heilbut makes this point about “When the Gate Swings Open” in the brief album notes.
1. Neither Roxie Moore nor Tony Heilbut can remember the exact month when Rosetta’s leg was amputated, but both say it was not long after she returned to Philadelphia.
2. Les Ledbetter, “Sunday Is Soul Day at Lincoln Center,” New York Times, July 21, 1972.
3. Robert Sherman, “Gospel Rings Out Again at ‘Soul’ Fete,” New York Times, July 27, 1972.
4. Tony Heilbut, undated letter to Rosetta Tharpe. Personal collection of Annie Morrison.
5. Courtesy of Roxie Moore. Dated October 16, 1973.
1. Dave Hepburn, “Big Bonanza in Gospel Music,” Sepia, March 1963, 13.
2. James Greenwood, “Jazz” column, review of Jazz Expo ’70: American Folk, Blues and Gospel Festival, n.d., n.p. Clipping from the personal collection of Annie Morrison.
3. Christopher Small, Music of the Common Tongue: Survival and Celebration in Afro-American Music (New York: Riverside Press, 1987), 387.