Wolverhampton’s own Beverley Knight as Rosetta with Ntombizodwa Ndlovu as Marie

Marie & Rosetta

Wolverhampton Grand

****

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock’n’Roll, is perhaps better known for her inspiration than her name. Perhaps? If we are honest most people have never heard of her or the part she played in musical history but she and her innovations influenced the careers of some of the biggest names in rock.

Names such as Aretha Franklin, Hendrix, Tina Turner, Tom Jones, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, . . . Chuck Berry happily utilised her guitar style and she was Little Richard’s inspiration to become a performer. He sang with her at one of her concerts while he was a teenager, his first public performance outside church.

For such an influential figure Rosetta had three big barriers to universal fame. First, she was black in a society, especially in southern states, where segregation was the norm with black people denied votes, education and even justice. Then she was a woman in a man’s world and finally there was her music – gospel, and gospel was never mainstream. It was hallelujah, Sunday morning church music . . . until Rosetta came along, that is,

George Brant’s play takes place in a single day in 1946 in a funeral parlour somewhere in rural Mississippi where Rosetta, played superbly by Wolverhampton’s own Beverley Knight, is moulding her protégé Marie Knight, played with delightful innocence by Ntombizodwa Ndlovu.

A funeral parlour? This was rural Mississippi and as for hotels? Rosetta and Marie were black so it was sleep indoors, in coffins even, or in a less than salubrious tour bus . . . or jail. The whole crew are black with just a white driver who acted as cook . . . and protection from too much police harassment.

The performance they were rehearsing for was not in a stadium or auditorium but a tobacco warehouse on the edge of town with a poor, black audience.

Contralto Marie had been seen singing with Rosetta’ great rival and Gospel star Mahalia Jackson, and so had invited her to join her which you suspect was a mix of finding a great singer who would fit in and improve her own show . . . and getting one over on Mahalia.

Rosetta’s life had arrived at a crossroads. She had grown up is a church singer, gospel through and through, but the church frowned upon her new interpretation of gospel with swing and when she added electric guitar to the mix . . . we were heading into the realms of blasphemy and damnation.

Rosetta was mixing jazz, blues, swing, R&B and gospel, with country thrown in for good measure, and had invented the solo electric guitar riffs in songs long before anyone even coined the phrase rock and roll. Not just a pioneer, she was the creator.

Musical director and guitarist Shirley Tetteh

Music is the mainstay of the play and Knight and Ndlovu don’t disappoint with some 14 songs all wonderfully performed including the likes of Didn’t It Rain, Four or Five Times and the less Gospel like I want a Tall Skinny Papa. As Rosetta put it, her God is a fun one who “don’t want the devil to have all the good music.”.

 The singing is worth the price of the ticket alone all played by a brilliant all female four piece band under musical director Shirley Tetteh, who plays a mean jazz and blues guitar and an even meaner electric.

The music gives us some goosebump moments with its power and emotion but the words of the script perhaps less so and at time dialogue was lost in the deep southern accents – although set against that, they were consistent.

The script is workmanlike, interesting at times but never stopping you in your tracks, we learn a little about Marie, a little about Rosetta, we have a glimpse into the racist and sexist world of the USA, of Rosetta’s appearances with the likes of Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington at The Cotton Club, where black performers were . . . let’s say tolerated, while black customers were banned.

We see Marie at first struggling to release gospel songs from the religious constraints of the Church to the swing and often raunchy setting of Rosetta’s unique style, illustrated from the start with Rosetta swinging into her hit This Train and Marie following with Were you there sung as if she is in cassock and surplice before the altar at evensong. Marie is about be introduced to swing . . .

We see this slow transformation of Marie, her mix of hero worship of a star and unease at taking Gospel out of its church setting, while Rosetta from being a little dismissive of Marie slowly warms to her.

The rumours are that the pair had a romantic relationship but that’s another story and hardly important here in a play about a musical legend which if nothing else will have people searching Wikipedia, Spotify and Amazon Music for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and finding what they have missed all these years – see below.

We open and close with Marie finishing the make up of Rosetta, from their initial meeting to . . . we end with a sad and moving Peace in the Valley.

Wonderful performances but there is just a feeling that perhaps as a play it is not quite sure what it wants to say or how to say it or where it wants to go, you are left with a feeling there is more we want to know,

The play is carried along by the brilliant singing of Knight and Ndlovu and they bring their characters to life beautifully, with the outgoing Rosetta, hiding a softer centre, and Knight and her initial uncertainty as she sees her ideas of Gospel music challenged and slowly changed. It is done with emotion and empathy and cannot be faulted.

Lily Arnold’s set is simple with the band behind curtains to continue the funeral parlour scene and Knight’s piano represented by a piano stool and Rosetta’s guitar by an open guitar case. Merely symbolic, but it works. Director Monique Touko allows the action to flow skirting over some of the less involved moments and giving the all important songs full rein.

Their story will be told at the Grand to 31-05-25.

Roger Clarke

27-05-25

In 1964 legendary Granada TV producer Johnny Hamp created a series of music specials featuring American based Blues artists including The Blues and Gospel Train at a rainswept disused Manchester station in 1964 which included two numbers from Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

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