Quote:Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Singer
Sister Rosetta Tharpe 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, ... Wikipedia
Born: March 20, 1915, Cotton Plant, Arkansas, United States
Died: October 9, 1973, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Albums: The Original Soul Sister, Live in 1960, more
Movies: The American Folk-Blues Festival: The British Tours 1963-1966
Spouse: Russell Morrison (m. 1951–1973), Thomas Thorpe (m. 1934–1938)
Songs
This Train

Quote:On 7 May 1964, a gaggle of excited passengers alighted on to a rainy disused railway station platform in south Manchester and took their seats for what one of the city's leading music academics says was a "massively culturally significant" gig.

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"Johnnie Hamp, the legendary Granada TV producer, had booked them the year before and did so again, only this time instead of it being in a studio, he had the great idea of staging it in a disused train station in south Manchester."

Mr Hamp himself says the idea for the station set rolled out of an early show he had done, in which he hired three trains as a backdrop for Little Eva's The Loco-motion.

"Hiring them meant I had a relationship with the railways, so when we decided to do the second blues show outside of a studio, they tipped me off to the derelict station.

"I asked if they could throw in a train as well, which we dressed with a cow-catcher and such like, and everything fell into place.

"Of course, the imagery of the trains, the whistle blowing in the distance, is one that is long associated with the blues."

The station was dressed up to look like one from the American South, but typically for Manchester, the weather did not echo that area's dustbowl conditions.

Shortly after the train which carried the audience the few miles south from Manchester's city centre pulled in, a storm lashed the station.

Mr Hamp says the downpour would have been his worst memory of the show had it not led to his best.

"Sister Rosetta came to me and asked if she could change her opening number to Didn't It Rain?," he said.

"When she strapped on her guitar, it was astounding."