11. Sister Rosetta TharpeThe Best Of
I’m sure everybody else has seen that little clip of Sister Rosetta from the Granada show in the 60s [The Blues And Gospel Train, broadcast in May 1964, from Wilbraham Road station in Whalley Range]. It’s a wet afternoon on that platform when Sister Rosetta turns up in her churchy gear, and then she brings out a Gibson SG! My first guitar was a Gibson SG, which I’d seen in a shop window, and it was the love of my life.
They were the only guitars I knew that were good, so I’d put down a deposit and it cost £500, which was a huge amount of money back then. I worked in a pub all through the summer break to save up for that guitar, bought it – it was beautiful – and loved it so much, but then it disappeared. Years later, my wife, having heard me talk about how much I’d loved this guitar, found a replica for my 60th birthday, as close as possible to a vintage guitar of the same age. Mine’s the same colour as Sister Rosetta’s, all cream, but no, her guitar playing isn’t like mine. Her’s is extraordinary.
If she’d been a man, she would have been placed much, much higher up the ranks in terms of what she was doing. My best of has the song ‘I Heard My Mother Call My Name In Prayer’ on it, which is so sad, and so full of that gospel respect for mothers. Clearly, something terrible had happened in the subject’s life, but the mother had remained steadfast, kneeling down in her cottage on the hill to pray to the Lord. It’s so beautiful. Also, there’s a brilliant, quite graphic, song called ‘Were You There When They Crucified Our Lord’? Can you tell I’m a Catholic?
