Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Lonesome Road

We've posted a few of Rosetta Tharpe's YouTube clips here at SqueezeMyLemon, because she is so spectacularly placed at the junction of blues and gospel music that it is mind boggling when you really consider how talented she was.

And it seems to me that she does not really get the credit that she deserves for her ground breaking work.

Just listen to this one and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.



Sister Rosetta Tharpe @Amazon.com


2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Fitzgerald

I know close to nothing in music and I'm learning more every day as I listen to your tunes posted here.

I think you could add a bit of jazz
to the "Blues and Gospel" description. At a certain point in the song it really sounded jazzy to me.

Anyway it's the kind of old tune I like to listen.

Thanks for the post friend.

fitzgerald said...

Hey MikeyBoy, thanks for stopping by. Yes it can be difficult to keep all the labels straight, I think musicians and many fans, don't really care what you call it.

I am sure that Rosetta Tharpe could play any kind of music that she wanted to, she was just that good. But we also have to recognize that she primarily sang her music in churches (at one time she had a gospel television show). Which is why she is considered mostly a gospel singer. She also was doing a lot of things with a guitar that no one else did until much later (some of the early rock n roll musicians owe her a debt, because they copied some of what she was doing).

Blues, jazz, Gospel, folk, and country share many of the same roots and trade sounds and styles with each other. And it can be hard to label some music as one or the other.