A Rock ‘n’ Roll Entrance: Black Women Pioneers
All of these rock ‘n’ roll pioneers were African American, coming from jazz, rhythm ‘n’ blues, and even gospel backgrounds. They took an active, decisive part in the genre’s development.
Trixie Smith
The first known pairing of the words “rock” and “roll” belongs to a blueswoman, Trixie Smith. Born in 1895 in Atlanta, she followed the standard path of her contemporaries, moving from vaudeville troupes to the stages of Harlem by way of the TOBA circuit. She signed her first contract in 1922 with the Black Swan label and recorded a song called “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)”; the lyrics paired the words “rock and roll” as a clear evocation of the sexual act. Her subsequent career crossed paths with Fletcher Henderson and Paramount, with whom she released several tracks in 1924, then with Louis Armstrong on “Railroad Blues” in 1925, and with John Hammond in the 1930s. She also tried her hand at cinema, where she met no more success than in her music career. She died in September 1943 in New York without having left a lasting imprint on posterity. Only the expression “rock ‘n’ roll” survived her. It had gained popularity by the late 1930s, transcending its sexual connotation without ever fully shedding it, coming to denote a dance and, soon enough, a wild style of music.
Ella Fitzgerald
Here again, an influential woman played a role in its popularization: the unlikely Ella Fitzgerald, diva of jazz and luminous rival of Billie Holiday. The young singer from Newport News, Virginia, was twenty years old when she recorded “Rock It for Me,” a song written by Kay and Sue Werner:
“But today the rage is rhythm and rhyme
So won’t you satisfy my soul
With the rock and roll?”
Nineteenth on the Billboard chart in 1938, “Rock It for Me” ranks among the singer’s earliest successes. At this point she was still under the wing of Chick Webb, who had hired her for his orchestra after she won an amateur contest at the Apollo in 1934. Raised by her mother, whom she lost at fifteen, Ella had originally dreamed of becoming a dancer, but her vocal range, spanning three octaves, opened more doors in music. Fleeing the abuse of her stepfather and the reform school where she had been sent, she saw singing as her only chance to escape the streets. It was at the Apollo showcase that Webb spotted her. She learned everything about the craft at his side, within the walls of the Savoy, and recorded her first compositions, including “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which captured the public’s attention. When Chick Webb died in 1939, Ella Fitzgerald took over the orchestra and became the first woman to lead a big band. She continued as a solo artist on Decca starting in 1942, where she was produced by a certain Milt Gabler, who had supervised Bessie Smith’s final recording session and the session for Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” Placing herself in their lineage, Ella was nonetheless drawn to modern forms of jazz: swing, then bebop, the modernist movement she had described as “rock ‘n’ roll” in “Rock It for Me.”
Rock ‘n’ roll would not define itself as a standalone musical genre until the first half of the 1950s, around the time Fitzgerald moved to the Verve Records stable and established herself as the “First Lady” of jazz. Faithful to the genre, she was served by Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, some of the greatest composers and musicians of her time. The smoothness of her voice, her innate sense of rhythm and improvisation, bursting forth in her inimitable scat passages, made her one of the timeless figures of contemporary music. After an incredibly rich career spanning no fewer than sixty albums released over thirty years, from 1954 to 1986, she stepped away from the studios and died of a heart attack in 1996.
After his work in jazz, Milt Gabler turned his attention to rock’n’roll, that derivative of the blues blended with rhythm ‘n’ blues and country influences. By championing the young Bill Haley and His Comets, he freed the genre from the race records category and handed it to white musicians. These musicians, fascinated by African American productions, did not hesitate to plunder the classic repertoire, including its female contributions. Case in point: Ma Rainey’s “Jealous Hearted Blues,” in which she had already used the words rock and roll—“It takes a rocking chair to rock/A rubber ball to roll”—was repurposed by Bill Haley to become “Sundown Boogie,” a pure piece of rock‘n’roll.
Women did not merely inspire the style or give it a name; they shaped it directly. Just like the blues, rock ‘n’ roll counts several pioneering women of considerable influence, though they have often been overshadowed by the memory of men. Indeed, alongside the Big Joe Turners, Roy Browns, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudups, and Wynonie Harrises stood several women who played a foundational role. The first, and without question the most influential of all, is Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Rosetta Thorpe
Born in March 1915 in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, Rosetta Nubin grew up in the cotton fields where her parents worked and within the walls of the Baptist church where her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, known as “Mother Bell,” played and sang. Steeped in religious music, “Little Rosetta” displayed an extraordinary facility with the guitar from the age of four, a path her mother encouraged her to pursue. Trained in gospel singing, she accompanied Mother Bell in an evangelist troupe that performed across the South for several years. Then, around 1925, mother and daughter settled in a church in Chicago. Around the same time, the blues was traveling up the Mississippi and taking root in the city, and it certainly influenced the young girl’s trajectory. She would never stop moving closer to secular music.
Rosetta married the preacher Thomas Thorpe in 1934, transforming his name to become “Sister” Rosetta Tharpe. Her refined style made her an attraction throughout the city; she was even invited to perform in churches across the country, launching her first tours with her mother and husband. However, Rosetta stirred debate within the religious community: by facilitating contact with the secular world, she drew criticism from purists who denounced her use of the guitar and her tendency to corrupt sacred gospel with blasphemous blues. Sister Rosetta did not fear her opponents and refused to distinguish one music from another. She disregarded conventions, despite her attachment to the Church.
In 1938, she divorced and moved to New York, still accompanied by her mother. She played at the Cotton Club and grew close to the major figures of the local jazz scene, including the omnipresent John Hammond, who introduced her to Bessie Smith. At the same time, she signed a contract with Decca and began recording her first songs. With a stroke of genius, she blended gospel with blues, jazz with popular music. She evolved musically in an up-tempo register dominated by a guitar-voice pairing that contributed directly to the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll. In her songs, religious references mingled with blues themes, testimonies of faith with heartbreak. In that regard, “Rock Me,” one of her first singles, is explicit:
“But, oh, if you leave me I will die
You hold me in the bosom
‘Till the storms of life is over, oh
Rock me in the cradle of our love.”
Sister Rosetta wielded the blues culture of double meaning, here conflating God with a probable lover. She exploited every ambiguity of the word “rock,” at once sexual and religious in connotation. “Rock Me” triggered the fury of religious conservatives nearly twenty years before Ray Charles would provoke them again with “I Got a Woman.” The favorable reception from the general public, which propelled “Rock Me” and “This Train” toward the top of the charts, reinforced Tharpe’s artistic choices. She recorded titles as devout as the gospels “How Far From God” and “Precious Lord,” while openly presenting herself as an heir to the iconic figures of female blues, capable of singing carnal love. Conducting her private life with the same spirit of independence, she took liberties with the traditional model, carrying on multiple romantic relationships, marriages, and divorces. The “Sister” was no moral exemplar, as the English jazzman George Melly recalled: “It turns out that Sister Rosetta, on stage, practically had a halo over her head, but backstage, she loved her booze and her good times [...] and behaved very badly.”
Rosetta helped invent both a musical style and a way of carrying oneself, both of which came to be called rock ‘n’ roll.
During the war years, her popularity was such that one of her songs, “Strange Things Happening Every Day,” was selected to appear among the “V-Discs,” a selection of songs sent to American troops fighting overseas. The track, recorded in 1944 with Sammy Price, was built on the combination of a boogie rhythm and a guitar melody—the musical structure at the root of rock‘n’roll. It was a smash hit with both the boys overseas and civilians, reaching number two on the African American charts.
In 1946, while other singers were asserting themselves in the gospel register, Mahalia Jackson among them, Sister Rosetta continued her work of de-demonizing secular music in partnership with Marie Knight, a gospel singer from Sanford, Florida, who had also divorced a preacher. Around this time, reinforcing her singular identity, Sister Rosetta made the bold and forward-looking choice to abandon acoustic for electric guitar, marking the shift with a new recorded version of “That’s All.” The instrument, deemed diabolical, only further offended puritanical sensibilities. Sister Rosetta could not have cared less and made a habit of punctuating her singing with electric solos. One must hear her versions of “Didn’t It Rain” or “Up Above My Head,” which she played armed with a Gibson Les Paul plugged into a Hammond B3 amp. A true innovator, she embarked on a musical revolution that made her a reference point for the vast majority of rock icons, from Elvis Presley to Eric Clapton. She played a decisive role for the young Little Richard when, in 1945, she invited onstage a boy who was still nothing more than a small-time church choir singer. In 1970, Little Richard would return the favor by inviting her to record a joint, self-titled album.
Rosetta Tharpe’s influence extended beyond the sphere of rock’n’roll and reached the British rock of the 1960s. In the spring of 1964, she participated in the European tour of the Blues and Gospel Caravan alongside Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, Reverend Gary Davis, and several others—all monuments of the blues with whom she competed for the spotlight. Her success brought her to BBC television in 1964, and it was a tremendous surprise for Britain’s youth to discover this woman with the powerful voice, dressed like a society lady, moving with equal ease along a Manchester train platform and across the neck of her white Gibson. The blues revival of the 1960s was kind to her, and Sister Rosetta released no fewer than ten albums during this period, most of them recorded live. Her final record, Singing in My Soul, dates from 1969. The following year, at fifty-five, she suffered a stroke and had a leg amputated due to diabetes. She was forced to retire from the stage before passing three years later, in 1973, following a second stroke. A trailblazing artist, Sister Rosetta Tharpe stands as both an exception and a model in the American artistic landscape; yet she was not the only woman to actively participate in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Around the same time, Big Mama Thornton was also making herself heard.
Big Mama Thornton
Ten years younger than Sister Rosetta, Willie Mae Thornton was born in December 1926 in Dale County, Alabama, and grew up in Montgomery. Her father held a position in a local Baptist church; her mother sang there every Sunday. It was on those pews that Thornton, like Sister Rosetta and most Black artists of her generation, first encountered music. Early on, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and sang gospel hymns. When her mother died prematurely in 1941, Willie Mae Thornton was only fourteen. Already an accomplished and determined singer, she left town and joined a troupe, the Hot Harlem Revue, which toured the South. Over the course of about eight years, she honed her style there, drawing directly from the blues tradition. She quickly set herself apart through the power of her voice, the quality of her tone, her taut singing, and her vibrato. Through contact with the other artists in the company, she learned to play the harmonica and, remarkably, developed a passion for the drums. She was thus one of the first known female artists to take a seat behind the instrument.
A figure of imposing build and brash personality, she quickly earned the nickname “Big Mama,” the stage name under which she signed a contract with Peacock Records in 1951. Based in Houston, Texas, she performed at the Apollo and grew close to the producer Johnny Otis, with whom she recorded a cornerstone of rock’n’roll history in 1952: “Hound Dog.” The lyrics reprised the posture of traditional blues feminism, denouncing the cowardice of male behavior; as for the arrangement—electric, rhythmic, driven by Pete Lewis’s guitar—it made the track one of the first authentic rock’n’rolls in history. Young America danced, and “Hound Dog” held the number one spot for seven consecutive weeks. Other artists hoped to ride the wave and launch their careers nationally. In 1953, Little Esther Phillips, a singer close to Johnny Otis with whom Big Mama performed in the late 1950s, recorded a more rhythm’n’blues-flavored version. In 1955, Freddie Bell & The Bellboys covered “Hound Dog” with a country influence before Elvis Presley released a rock ‘n’ roll version that sold five million copies between July and December 1956. By then the lyrics had changed. They no longer featured a woman criticizing her lover but a young man scolding a friend for not being a proper “hound dog.” Between the two interpretations, rock ‘n’ roll had become the music of teenagers and young boys preoccupied with girls.
On the B-side of “Hound Dog,” Thornton sang “They Call Me Big Mama,” a song in which she defied prevailing beauty standards while repeating with force, “I can rock and roll, baby,” despite her obesity:
“They call me Big Mama
‘Cause I weigh 300 pounds
I can rock and I can roll them
And I can really go to town
Satisfy you this morning
If you take me home with you.”
Through these lyrics, Big Mama adopted a flirtatious stance. Like her blueswomen predecessors, she inverted gender assumptions and turned every meaning of the term rock’n’roll into a feminine exercise. Through Thornton’s voice, women reclaimed the upper hand in matters of sexuality, social relations, dance, and above all music. The image of the dominant, independent yet desired woman also appeared in several of her other songs, with titles as explicit as “Let Your Tears Fall Baby” and “Stop a Hoppin’ On Me.”
By the late 1950s, Big Mama Thornton had settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and was touring with Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Eddie Boyd, and other heavyweights of African American rock. In 1965, she crossed the Atlantic with them and performed in several European cities. This was the occasion for her to release her first album, a live record simply titled In Europe, on her new label, Arhoolie. Enjoying undiminished popularity, particularly among the younger generation, she secured a contract with Mercury, where she released Stronger Than Dirt in 1969, an album with an emblematic title that achieved striking success and allowed Big Mama to reaffirm her sovereignty over rock’n’roll. Two songs attracted particular attention from the public and the artistic community: “Ball and Chain” and her cover of George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Both tracks profoundly influenced Janis Joplin. Joplin’s fame reflected back on Thornton to some degree, and she released four more albums between 1969 and 1973. But heavy alcohol consumption took a toll on her health and career in the years that followed. Deeply gaunt, she nonetheless continued to perform live, with the same fire. These concerts provided the occasion for two live albums on Vanguard in 1975: Jail and Sassy Mama!. She died in July 1984, at the age of fifty-seven.
Erline Harris
If Big Mama built her career on the success of “Hound Dog,” Erline Harris made her name with “Rock and Roll Blues,” a foundational track from 1949 and the first to contain the term rock’n’roll. An original composition by this young singer born in Arkansas in April 1914, it caught the interest of the DeLuxe Records label, which gave its author the chance to record the song and step out of obscurity. Since fleeing family poverty, Erlyn Eloise Johnson had traveled the country without success, from New York to St. Louis, before settling in New Orleans with her dancer husband, Ike Harris, taking on occasional contracts in local theaters. A lively jump-blues number, “Rock and Roll Blues” drew heavily from the female musical tradition. Reviving the liberality and sexual appetite of the blues pioneers, it flouted propriety: “I really want some more, we’re gonna rock and roll all day long.” Passing the baton of transgression, the woman now nicknamed “Rock‘n’Roll” Harris went on to record “Jump and Shout,” which contested the title of “first rock ‘n’ roll in history” with “Hound Dog” and “Strange Things Happening Every Day.” The diminishing success of subsequent singles on DeLuxe did not prevent the Chess label from offering her a new single in 1951, “Pushin’ My Heart Around,” which fared no better. With no new contract forthcoming, she retreated to the clubs of Georgia, performed there for two years, then put an end to her artistic career to devote herself to family life.
LaVern Baker
The year 1953 proved kinder to another face of early rock‘n’roll: LaVern Baker, who was then enjoying her first solo successes on the young Atlantic label. Rooted in the jazz and swing tradition, she began performing at seventeen in the clubs of her native Chicago in 1946, under the name Bea Baker. After a brief stint at Okeh Records, she signed with Atlantic and released “Soul on Fire,” an up-tempo song that set her apart, followed by “Tweedlee Dee” and “Jim Dandy,” which reached the top of the rhythm ‘n’ blues and pop charts. Flirting with rock ‘n’ roll, LaVern Baker also chose to maintain blues themes; however, aware that she was addressing the general public, she preferred to promote the image of the devoted woman over the sexually liberated rebel, as demonstrated by “Hey Memphis,” her demure response to Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister.” “I Cried a Tear,” “I Waited Too Long,” and “Saved,” all of which entered the top ten between 1958 and 1961, exploited the same clichés.
In 1961, the lyrics of “I’ll Never Be Free” were more explicit still: LaVern Baker openly declared herself a slave to her boyfriend—“I’ll never manage to break free from your gentle smile.” That same year, with the complicity of Jimmy Ricks, she recorded the torrid “You’re the Boss,” a more ambiguous text in which the two lovers mutually attributed authority to each other. When she recorded an album of Bessie Smith covers, the most politically charged lyrics were carefully set aside. Her career sputtered out by the late 1960s, then bounced back at the end of the 1980s with new projects and concerts. One final studio album even appeared in 1992 under the title Woke Up This Morning. She died in March 1997 of a stroke.