Mark 16:15 reads, “And then he told them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone’.” On this day of good news, I can’t think of a single better musician to honor, or one more faithful to that Gospel command than Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Rosetta didn’t set out to be a rebel, she was just blessed that way. By the time she was 4, she already knew her way around a guitar, and performed with her family’s traveling evangelical band by 6, eventually earning her own following as the “singing and guitar playing miracle.” She came into her own in the 1920s and 30s when it was rare enough for a woman to be an electric guitarist, rarer still for that woman to be black, and almost impossible that she’d be a black female gospel electric guitarist recording her first songs at the age of 23, but that’s Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s God-honest truth.

And the church folks didn’t like it not one bit. Sister Rosetta and THEIR Sunday music were rubbing shoulders with sinners in the nightclubs and bars she played. But the audiences ate it up. And wasn’t that the whole point? Why bother preaching the Guitar Gospel to people who already knew it? Sister Rosetta’s talents were best served and received in the streets.

The video I’ve shared is one of the most historically significant examples of how Sister Rosetta did her Lord’s work. Watch her exude light and love, then adorably conjure fire and brimstone with the wailing of her voice and guitar. The downpour was heaven-sent on May 7, 1964, the day Sister Rosetta opened her set at the Blues and Gospel Train concert featuring Muddy Waters and others at Wilbraham Railway Station in Manchester, England with “Didn’t It Rain?”

She’d already inspired the likes of Elvis, Little Richard and many more stateside, but Brits from Eric Clapton to Keith Richards to the Sex Pistols all credited her train show as monumental to their careers. Still, the true power of “Didn’t It Rain?” is in its origination as an African-American field work song. It joyfully tells the Biblical story of Noah’s enduring faithfulness to God and in turn, God’s promise to him fulfilled by the Flood. I have no doubt that it was among the songs sang by enslaved people in Galveston, Texas just 155 years ago on June 19, 1865 upon hearing the news that they were finally free.

So in the spirit of spreading Good News in every sense, enjoy the soulful sidewalk sermon that brought music everywhere to its knees at the hands of the Godmother of Rock-and-Roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“But Noah cried out, ‘Uh-uh, my friends,
The angels got the key, you can’t get in’”

𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬 | 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗜𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗥 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟬