Here shreds the bride: How Sister Rosetta Tharpe turned her wedding day into the first major rock concert
You might think that as a musician, performing on your wedding day would be a nice touch. Not only do you get to commit yourself to the love of your life in front of all your nearest and dearest, but you also get to serenade the guests while participating in another of your greatest passions. Sure, there is plenty of potential for it to also go horrendously wrong. You might end up playing gothic rock to a room of trad jazz aficionados, or you might have a few too many glasses of champagne at the reception and end up making a tit of yourself.
Gospel pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s wedding performance was a little more unusual. While certain elements were typical of a wedding, such as an organist playing ‘Here Comes The Bride’ and a minister presiding over the ceremony, the fact that a crowd of over 20,000 people turned up to witness her tie the knot at Griffith Baseball Stadium in Washington, D.C., was a little unusual, to say the least.
More abnormal still was the fact that 12 months prior to her big day in July 1951, she didn’t have anyone to get married to. The entire occasion was set up as nothing more than a publicity stunt rather than a declaration of love to her betrothed, and due to the decline in her popularity towards the end of the 1940s, her concert promoters were keen to give her a boost as she entered the new decade.
According to music historian Gayle Wald in an interview with NPR, the thinking behind the move from the perspective of the promoters was that the baseball stadium had been used by the African-American community for large events and revivals in the past. “Let’s put it all together,” they thought. “She’s not an evangelist, but let’s have something close to that —we’ll have a sacred ceremony. Let’s do a wedding!”
Once Tharpe had fulfilled her contract and found herself a suitable groom for the occasion, she was ready to perform at the concert that would change her life in more ways than one. “There was a stage on second base,” explained Wald. “The musicians who had accompanied Rosetta Tharpe or were invited guests were playing the roles of the wedding party. So she had her backup singers; they were there to be her bridesmaids. Marie Knight, her old performing partner, was her maid of honour.”
How they managed to get both a preacher and a willing groom to agree to the stunt was also remarkable. The man Tharpe married was Russell Morrison, who would eventually become her manager, and according to Wald, the preacher was completely on board with the humour of the entire spectacle. “He was a little flippant in marrying them; he was known as a joker. He made jokes from the stage about whether Russell had the money for a ring.”
However, as much as the wedding itself was rooted in a joke, it was a success in many ways. The duo remained married until Tharpe passed away in 1973, and her career saw a slight upturn in fortune despite the emergence of other gospel and rock and roll singers during the 1950s. The most remarkable thing of all was that an African-American woman had performed to such a massive audience as early as 1951. As Wald puts it, “the fact that there was a solo female artist filling a stadium is remarkable. And so it’s possible this is an early stadium rock concert, or an early stadium pop concert, at least.”
