They held the wedding at Griffith Stadium, home to Washington’s then-baseball team, the Senators. The bride and her procession walked a satin carpet from the dugout to an altar at second base. And those who shared in the festivities on July 3, 1951, reportedly more than 19,000 of them, were mostly Black women who paid from 90 cents to $2.50 a ticket. In place of gold-embossed invitations, they had seen display ads in the Washington Afro-American.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the bride, was their heroine: a guitar picker from the Church of God in Christ and one of the era’s most acclaimed gospel singers. Her former duet partner, singer-pianist Madame Marie Knight, served as her maiden of honor. Her backing singers, the Rosettes, served as bridesmaids.
When she had booked the wedding venue, she didn’t even have a groom.
“Rosetta’s wedding and concert embodied feelings of community and hope that took her audience outside of their everyday lives,” historian Gayle Wald wrote in “Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.”
Sister Rosetta is having her moment now, more than 49 years after her death. A 2018 inductee to the rock-and-roll Hall of Fame, she has recently emerged as a social media meme in posts that highlight her influence on Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Chuck Berry, with some even positing her as the first rock-and-roll guitarist. She has been dubbed a “queer icon” for her reported bisexuality and relationship with Knight. A touring musical based on Wald’s book on Tharpe even headlines Ford’s Theatre through Saturday.
For Tharpe, who already had twice married and divorced, the wedding put her back in the public eye. She had sung both gospel and blues in the 1940s, with a big band led by Lucky Millinder. Later, she teamed up with Knight, finding success with their 1947 recording of “Up Above My Head, I Hear Music In The Air” before splitting up. Decca, her record company, noticing a decline in sales of her gospel records, had tried without success to mold her into a rhythm-and-blues performer.
Tharpe, though, had a distinctive persona to market. She had blazed a trail with her innovative electric guitar work, her occasional detours into secular music and, to churches’ dismay, her willingness to perform in night clubs.