Last night Youtube decided I'd be interested in a documentary about the gospel singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and the algorithm was right. I'd only heard vaguely about her and was bowled over by the power of her singing and guitar playing. I guess Mahalia Jackson was better known and more influential. But, according to the documentary, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was enormously popular with Black audiences. She staged a wedding for herself in a baseball stadium, and it was full.
Aretha Franklin came from the gospel tradition, too, and the emotional power of her singing comes from it. A few years ago my wife and I saw a thrilling documentary about her return to gospel, making me wonder how American Blacks were able in a very short time to create a powerful religious tradition.
I claim no expertise, but it appears to me that the gospel style of singing is unique in its intensity and power. When Sister Rosetta Belted out a note, she did it with enormous confidence. She knew just what she wanted to sing. It's not operatic voice production, needed to fill an entire auditorium and be heard above an orchestra. It's also not the voice production needed by performers in musicals (Ethel Merman comes to mind, a woman with a huge voice) before microphones were installed. Her entire being was projected in her singing, with no fear or hesitation. Her guitar playing had the same quality.
Much of the documentary about Rosetta Tharpe presented the depth and cruelty of segregation in the south. The pictures of "white only" and "colored only" signs on restaurants and bathrooms, among other things, were shocking. One of the old women who was interviewed in the film had been a backup singer for Sister Rosetta and remembered how they had to sneak food to them out the back door of restaurants. How could such shameful treatment have seemed normal to southern whites?
Musicians like these women created great art in the face of this cruel adversity. It's inspiring.
