Sister Rosetta Tharpe sang "Gospel Blues" in the 1930's & 1940's
(from the ANVIL Newsletter Chicago News Bureau)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (March 20, 1915 – October 9, 1973) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and recording artist. A pioneer of mid-20th-century music, she attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic acompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the godmother of rock and roll".[1][3][4][5][6] She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.[5][7][8]
Willing to cross the line between sacred and secular by performing her music of "light" in the "darkness" of nightclubs and concert halls with big bands behind her, Tharpe pushed spiritual music into the mainstream and helped pioneer the rise of pop-gospel, beginning with her 1939 hit "This Train".[1] Her unique music left a lasting mark on more conventional gospel artists, such as Ira Tucker, Sr., of the Dixie Hummingbirds. While she offended some conservative churchgoers with her forays into the pop world, she never left gospel music.
She was born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, to Katie Bell Nubin and Willis Atkins, who were cotton pickers. Little is known of her father, except that he was a singer. Tharpe's mother, Katie Bell Nubin, was also a singer and a mandolin player, evangelist, and preacher for the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which was founded in 1894 by Charles Harrison Mason, a black Baptist bishop, who encouraged rhythmic musical expression, dancing in praise and allowing women to preach in church. Encouraged by her mother, Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar as Little Rosetta Nubin at the age of four and was cited as a musical prodigy.[1][2][4]
By age six, Tharpe had joined her mother as a regular performer in a traveling evangelical troupe. Billed as a "singing and guitar playing miracle," she accompanied her mother in performances that were part sermon and part gospel concert before audiences across the American South.[2]
In the mid-1920s, Tharpe and her mother settled in Chicago, Illinois, where they performed religious concerts at the COGIC (Church of God in Christ) church on 40th Street, occasionally traveling to perform at church conventions throughout the country. Tharpe developed considerable fame as a musical prodigy, standing out in an era when prominent black female guitarists were rare.[13] In 1934, at age 19, she married Thomas Thorpe, a COGIC preacher, who accompanied her and her mother on many of their tours.
Are we living in another generation like Noah's, when toxic thinking is destroying our entire culture?
"The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was continually only evil. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart" (Gen. 6:5-6).
It is sobering to see what happened to the human heart because of a reckless thought life. It did not take long after sin had poured into the human race in the Garden of Eden for men's and women's thinking to go down the tubes. Almost immediately, Adam and Eve let fear dominate their thinking when they hid from the presence of God. God was no longer the focal image of their thoughts. Corrupt thinking only worsened as Cain murdered Abel when thoughts of jealousy and anger shaped his heart into a killer. Sin was crouching at the door of Cain's thought life, and he failed to master it. Each succeeding generation continued to allow sin to crowd God out of their thinking.
The Days of Noah: The Point of No Return
In Genesis 6, people's thought lives had so corrupted their hearts that they reached a point of no return. Every thought, imagination and intention of their human thinking was consistently and totally evil. The Bible does not say some of the imaginations and thoughts of the human race were continually evil, but all of their images, desires, intentions and inclinations in every single thought, were evil.
This was not just some weekend fling. It was their thinking from the time they got up in the morning until the time they went to bed at night. There was not a moment in the day when this evil thought process was not actively controlling their minds and shaping their hearts. They wanted absolutely nothing to do with God in their thinking and ultimately in their hearts.
The psalmist affirms this destructive habit of wrong thinking to the human heart:
"The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek God; God is not in all his thoughts" (Ps. 10:4).
This wicked and rebellious people in the time of Noah did not seek God in their thinking. God was not in one single thought. God is the most awesome thing we can ever think about, but these people were so deceived that they did not believe they needed God.
This is the tragic height of selfishness. This is the ultimate ego trip. This is the most dangerous thinking pattern on the planet. Without God in our thoughts, we have written the death sentence to the magnificent purpose God has prepared for our lives. To never know Him is the greatest catastrophe of the ages. He deserves the honor to be first in our thinking.
Our thoughts are a mighty weapon that can forge our hearts into a steel fortress for our God, or they can be a stealth bomber that penetrates our inner lives and destroys our hearts. Thoughts are a much more powerful weapon than any nuclear bomb. They are the critical component to our spiritual growth. We must have a disciplined thought life that is focused like a laser on God and His Word, or our hearts will become a mush of spiritual apathy and worldly lusts.
The devil is a master general at attacking the thought life of a Christian. His war strategy involves tactics of deception, pressure, and enticement to turn our thinking away from God and toward his kingdom. The devil knows that every action that flows out of the human heart originates from our thoughts. He knows that our moral character is an exact image of our thinking. Our thoughts determine whether our character drifts toward good or evil.
The devil knows that in order for a person to do evil, he must first think evil.
Within 10 generations after the fall in the garden, the devil was so successful that only one person on the entire Earth had godly thoughts. Sin had spread like wildfire and contaminated every single thought of what was probably between 235 million and 7 billion people. To imagine that only one person out of this massive population had his thought life together is mind-boggling. Nothing in their thoughts reflected the image of God and not one thought brought glory to God. They were wise, rich, sophisticated and cultured for their time, but the defining characteristic of their age was wickedness because of their thinking.
A civilization that is centered on an ungodly thought life is built on sinking sand. This civilization in the days of Noah received the fruit of their thoughts, which was wickedness and corruption that multiplied on the face of the Earth.
Only Noah was thinking rightly and found favor with God. No one else held the image of God and His words as the standard for their thoughts. No one else was guarding their thoughts. No one else cared that their thought life had nothing good in it, but was a breeding ground for evil. Only Noah had righteous thoughts that built his faith and fueled his obedience to God. Noah's thought life was pure and free from evil because he walked with God.
Genesis 6:6 reveals how the toxic thinking of the human race affected God's heart. These verses contain the first usage of the word heart in the Bible, and they describe a heart that is in deep sorrow.
"The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart" (Gen. 6:6).
The toxic thought life of His precious creation broke God's heart. God's heart was in horrible agony and pain as He groaned in sorrow over the condition of the heart of every member of the human race. He cried in agony that His people refused to honor Him with even one thought.
Are our thought lives any better today? Does our thinking bring great agony to the heart of God? How God must grieve today over the thought lives of so many Christians and the toxic thinking of this generation.
God is sounding out a clarion call to all who would listen that what we think is critically important to the heart of God. He knows He cannot have your heart if He does not first have your thoughts.
I don't want to break the heart of God because of my toxic thinking. I want to bring glory to God with my thinking. I want to honor Him with every thought. I do not want any virus to infect my thinking and take out the operating system of my heart. A reckless thought life led to the annihilation of an entire civilization. Is it happening again?
With his Doctorate of Jurisprudence as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Biblical Studies, History and Classics, Tim Rowe has practiced law for 31 years. He was host of the television show, Faith and the Law, which aired on Lesea Network.
Ed's Note: Eugene Peterson is the amazing man who authored "The Message" version of the Bible. Bono is the front man for the Irish group "U2".
Published on 26 Apr 2016
This short film documents the friendship between Bono (lead musician of the band U2) and Eugene Peterson (author of contemporary-language Bible translation The Message) revolving around their common interest in the Psalms. Based on interviews conducted by Fuller Seminary faculty member David Taylor and produced in association with Fourth Line Films, the film highlights in particular a conversation on the Psalms that took place between Bono, Peterson, and Taylor at Peterson’s Montana home.
The film is featured exclusively through FULLER studio, a site offering resources—videos, podcasts, reflections, stories—for all who seek deeply formed spiritual lives. Explore these resources, on the Psalms and a myriad of other topics, at Fuller.edu/Studio.
a Fourth Line Films production, in association with Fuller's Brehm Center Texas and W. David O. Taylor
Bono:
[Video message, 2002] Mr. Peterson, Eugene, my name is Bono. I'm the singer with the group U2 and wanted to video message you my thanks and our thanks from the band for this remarkable work you've done. There's been some great translations, very literary translations, but no translation that I've read that speaks to me in my own language, so I want to thank you for that. Take a rest now, won't you? Bye.
Eugene Peterson:
I’d never heard of Bono before. Then one of my students showed up in class with a copy of the Rolling Stones—Rolling Stones?—and in it there was an interview with Bono in which he talked about me and The Message. He used some slangy language about who I was, and I said, "Who's Bono?" They were dumbfounded I'd never heard of Bono, but that's not the circle I really travel in very much. That's how I first heard about him.
Then people started bringing me his music, and I listened to his music, and I thought, "I like this guy." After a while I started feeling quite pleased that he knew me.
[Interview at Point Loma Nazarene University, 2007:]
Dean Nelson:
Yes, but the rest of the story is that he invited you to come and hang with them for a while. You turned him down.
Eugene Peterson:
I was pushing a deadline on The Message. I was finishing up the Old Testament at the time, and I really couldn't do it.
Dean Nelson:
You may be the only person alive who would turn down the opportunity just to make a deadline. I mean, come on. It's Bono, for crying out loud!
Eugene Peterson:
Dean, he was Isaiah.
Dean Nelson:
Yeah.
Jan Peterson:
The Old Testament is a long, long book, much longer than the New Testament, and it did take a long time and a lot of devotion on both of our parts to have that happen.
Bono:
I have to say, in the last years, Eugene's writing has kept me as sane as this is, if you call it sane, which you probably won't. Run With the Horses, that's a powerful manual for me, and it includes a lot of incendiary ideas. I hadn't really thought of Jeremiah as a performance artist. Why do we need art? Why do we need the lyric poetry of the Psalms? Why do we need them? Because the only way we can approach God is if we're honest through metaphor, through symbol. Art becomes essential, not decorative. I learned about art, I learned about the Prophets, I learned about Jeremiah with that book, and that really changed me.
Eugene Peterson:
Then several years later...This was about 4 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago...Bono would like Jan and me to come to Dallas for a concert. We went to the concert. He was very sensitive to us. We were really well cared for, had really good seats. I'd never seen a mash pit before. That was my introduction to the mash pit. Is it a pit?
(Voice off camera):
It's a mosh pit.
Eugene Peterson:
Mosh pit. Okay. You can see how uneducated I am in this world.
We had a 3-hour lunch. We just had a lovely conversation. It was very personal, relational. He didn't put me on any kind of a pedestal, and I didn't him, so we were very natural with each other. Through that 3-hour conversation, I was just really taken by the simplicity of his life, of who he was, who he is. There was no pretension to him. At that point I just felt like he was a companion in the faith.
[About U2’s song “40,” based on Psalm 40:]
I think it's one of his best ones. He sings it a lot. I mean, he does this a lot. It's one of the songs that reaches into the hurt and disappointment and difficulty of being a human being. It acknowledges that in language that is immediately recognizable. There's something that reaches into the heart of a person and the stuff we all feel but many of us don't talk about.
Bono:
[Quoting from The Message’s translation of Psalm 40:]
I waited and waited and waited for God. At last he looked. Finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch. He pulled me from deep mud, stood me up on a solid rock to make sure that I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song...
I love Bono's heart and spirit. I couldn't say enough kind things about him! Very interesting reflections and personal translations of the Psalms. I think its time for me to dig out my copy of The Message again. That last bit where Bono (forever 5) goes running up the steps after JUST coming back on tour from his bike accident had me in stitches. Jan Peterson went full Mom on him. "Don't run!" The way he stopped and slowed down was so funny!
My favorite part: Dean: It was Bono (inviting him to visit); Peterson: Dean, it was Isaiah! ( I wrote at 3:35 minutes) Now my favorite part is "40" the snippet of the song based on the Psalm 40. (written at 6:10) Last favorite part: "Don't run! at 20:30 minutes.
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