A marker memorializing Sister Rosetta Tharpe has been placed on the winding stretch of Arkansas Highway 17 between I-40 and her birthplace of Cotton Plant. Photo by Jeff Mores

Where Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Story Began

A side trek to Cotton Plant, Arkansas, the Delta town where the Godmother of Rock and Roll first found her voice — and why she remains one of American music’s most overlooked pioneers.

Rolling out of Memphis after a trip through Mississippi, my drive back to Northwest Arkansas follows a familiar route across the Mississippi River. About 60 miles west, I exit Interstate 40 and head north on Arkansas Highway 17. Recently designated the Sister Rosetta Tharpe Memorial Highway, the noise of eighteen-wheelers is quickly replaced by a visual of open fields and a huge horizon. Eight miles down that road sits Cotton Plant, Arkansas, a small Delta town that gave me reason to leave the interstate and take a closer look.

The town announces itself quietly. A weathered water tower still features the words “City of Cotton Plant.” Narrow streets pass aging brick storefronts and homes shaded by broad trees. A hand-painted welcome mural celebrates the farmland that has long sustained the community. Along Highway 17, the Sister Rosetta Tharpe Memorial Highway sign stands as a reminder that the world eventually took notice of someone born here.

Photos by Jeff Mores

Born in Cotton Plant on March 20, 1915, as Rosetta Nubin Atkins, Tharpe would grow into one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Long before Elvis Presley became the King of Rock and Roll, before Chuck Berry’s duckwalk, before Little Richard’s explosive stage presence, and before Johnny Cash found his voice, there was a young Arkansas woman with a guitar who was already blending gospel, electric energy and showmanship into something the world had never quite heard before.

[embed]This video includes several energetic clips of Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing and playing guitar. She was a presence unlike anyone who had come before her.

Today, she is remembered as the Godmother of Rock and Roll, a pioneering artist whose influence stretched far beyond any single genre, shaping musicians on both sides of the Atlantic and across multiple generations.

Yet despite that influence, her name remains unfamiliar to many listeners.

The list of artists who credited Tharpe as an influence reads like a hall of fame roster. Little Richard frequently cited Tharpe as his greatest inspiration and credited her with helping launch his career by giving him an early opportunity to perform before a crowd. Chuck Berry once remarked that his entire career was “one long Sister Rosetta Tharpe impersonation.” Johnny Cash often spoke of his admiration for Tharpe and once called her his favorite singer. Bob Dylan described her as “a powerful force of nature, a guitar-playin’, singin’ evangelist” during an episode of his Theme Time Radio Hour satellite radio program.

This is a public domain publicity photo of Sister Rosetta Tharpe from 1938, by photographer James J. Kriegsmann.

Across the Atlantic, future rock icons Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Keith Richards were captivated by her performances when she toured England. Mavis Staples later recalled telling her father, Pops Staples, that she wanted to learn guitar “like you and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.” Even decades later, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Al Green and Prince were drawing from a musical path she helped create.

Every legend has an origin story. For Sister Rosetta Tharpe, it began in Cotton Plant.

Tharpe spent her earliest years in the Arkansas Delta singing alongside her mother, Katie Harper Bell Nubin, a traveling evangelist in the Church of God in Christ. Church was where she first learned to command an audience, pair faith with music and discover that a song could move people emotionally, spiritually and physically all at the same time.

When she left Arkansas for Chicago with her mother at age six in 1921, she carried those early lessons with her. In Chicago, they became part of Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, where the young performer continued developing her gifts before traveling the country on church circuits and revival tours.

By the mid-1930s, those journeys had taken her to Philadelphia, where she became a rising star within gospel circles while performing at Holy Temple Church of God in Christ. and beyond. The Arkansas roots remained, but her audience was growing. She never really stopped building on that foundation.

Ignoring Criticism

Tharpe had become one of the first commercially successful gospel recording artists in America. She was performing in nightclubs, recording hit records and playing electric guitar with a confidence few women were expected to possess during the era. Some church leaders criticized her for taking gospel music beyond church walls. Others questioned her willingness to blend sacred themes with secular audiences.

Tharpe ignored the criticism.

Instead, she created a sound that helped bridge gospel, blues and popular music at a time when those boundaries were still rigidly enforced. Songs like “Rock Me,” “Strange Things Happening Every Day” and “Up Above My Head” carried the spirit of the church, while delivering a rhythm, energy and guitar style that foreshadowed rock and roll years before the genre had a name.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing at Café Zanzibar. Public domain photo courtesy of the New York Public Library Digital Collections.

She was also breaking barriers far beyond music.

As a Black woman touring America during segregation, Tharpe faced obstacles many of her future admirers would never encounter. Finding hotels and restaurants that would serve her and her band could be a constant challenge. To solve the problem, she traveled with a customized tour bus that provided sleeping quarters and meals on the road. What later became a symbol of rock-star luxury began for Tharpe as a practical response to discrimination.

Witnessing Something Revolutionary

Meanwhile, audiences were witnessing something revolutionary. She sang with the power of a preacher and played guitar with a style that could be joyful, fierce and dazzling — all simultaneously. Decades before arena rock became a cultural phenomenon, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was commanding stages and electrifying crowds.

Despite helping shape the sound of rock and roll, Tharpe never achieved the level of recognition afforded to many of the artists who followed.

Part of the reason lies in the way rock-and-roll history was eventually told. The genre became associated with a generation of young male stars, many of them white, who openly acknowledged their debt to Tharpe while reaching audiences she never could during the segregated era. Her innovations remained embedded in the music, even as her story faded from public view.

Author Gayle Wald, whose book Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe has helped introduce many to Tharpe, captured that contradiction perhaps better than anyone:

“The spirit of Sister Rosetta Tharpe is conjured every time a rock musician plugs in and aims for rapture. When you see Elvis Presley singing early in his career … imagine he is channeling Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It’s not an image I think we’re used to thinking about when we think of rock & roll history — we don’t think about the black woman behind the young white man.”

Few observations better explain why Tharpe’s influence can be heard throughout rock and roll, while her name remains unfamiliar to so many listeners.

In recent years, that imbalance has slowly started to change.

[embed]This scene shows Sister Rosetta Tharpe portrayed in the 2022 biographical major motion picture, “Elvis.”

In 2018, Tharpe was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a recognition many historians argued should have come decades earlier. Today, scholars, musicians and fans continue to revisit her recordings and performances, uncovering just how much of modern music traces back to her work.

Angela Ryland, a longtime resident in the Cotton Plant area, has worked hard for the past several years to begin to erect signage and other historical markers and tributes to amplify the connection between Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her birthplace of Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Photo by Jeff Mores

Listen closely and traces of Sister Rosetta Tharpe can be heard almost everywhere — from the British rock explosion that produced Clapton and the Rolling Stones, to the soul of Aretha Franklin, and the artistry of Prince.

In a tribute to Tharpe’s legacy, Roseanne Cash described the Godmother of Rock and Roll as an artist who “traveled the world and left it scorched with her fearlessness and musical originality.” Few musicians have exerted such influence across so many genres while receiving so little recognition from the broader public.

The line connecting those artists runs back through decades of music history to a woman who started singing in church as a child and dared to play an electric guitar in ways no one expected. It runs all the way back to a small Arkansas Delta town tucked away from I-40, called Cotton Plant.

Today, the town is quiet. It’s easy to pass through without realizing what began here more than a century ago. The fields remain. The streets remain. The place that shaped Rosetta Nubin Atkins remains.

Photos by Jeff Mores

Her sound traveled from Arkansas churches, to Chicago sanctuaries, through Philadelphia congregations and revival halls, onto concert stages and into popular music. From an electric guitar slung over the shoulder of a young Black woman came inspiration for generations of artists who would help define rock and roll, soul, gospel and popular music for decades to come.

“Sister Rosetta Tharpe was anything but ordinary and plain. She was a big, good-lookin woman, and divine, not to mention sublime and splendid. She was a powerful force of nature. A guitar-playin’, singin’ evangelist.”

— Bob Dylan