Rosetta Tharpe was a groundbreaking, profoundly impacting American music history pioneer by pioneering the guitar technique that would eventually evolve into the rock and roll style played by Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Eric Clapton. However, despite her great popularity and influence on music history, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was first and foremost a gospel musician. Born Rosetta Nubin on March 20, 1915, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Although the identity of her father is unknown, Tharpe's mother, Katie Bell Nubin, was a singer, mandolin player and evangelist. At the encouragement of her mother, Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar from a very young age, and was by all accounts a musical prodigy. She began performing onstage with her mother from the age of four. By age six, she had joined her mother as a regular performer in a traveling evangelical troupe - before audiences all across the American South. By the mid-20s, Tharpe and her mother had settled in Chicago, Illi...