As lifelong fans of Arkansas music, we have a lot to be grateful for. One of those is the Internet, because thanks to those infamous interwebs, most major streaming music services now offer for streaming a bunch of our favorite impossible-to-find albums from hundreds of vintage Arkansas acts. Below are links to some of our favorites (in no particular order), not including the easier-to-find Arkansas legends such as Johnny Cash and Levon Helm, of course.
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Cotton Plant)
Sister Rosetta Tharpe – who is on the latest ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class of 2018 – is one of the essential figures in the history of rock and roll.
If she had not been there as a model and inspiration, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and other rock originators would have had different careers. No one deserves more to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Sister Rosetta became famous in 1938 with a record called “Rock Me.” She was a star through the 1940’s, a black woman singing gospel music to the accompaniment of her own driving electric guitar – howling and stamping. Her 1945 recording “Strange Things Happening Every Day” has been credited as the first gospel song to cross over to the “race” (later called “R&B”) charts – reaching Number Two and becoming an early model for rock and roll.
She was a sensation, selling out arenas into the 1950’s. In 1947, Sister Rosetta was the first person to put a 14-year-old boy named Little Richard Penniman on a stage. It changed Little Richard’s life – he decided right then to become a performer.
In 1951, twenty-five thousand fans paid to attend her on-stage wedding at Griffith Stadium in Washington DC. She was the hottest act on stage with a guitar. She became a model for Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash called her his favorite singer and biggest inspiration.
By the early Sixties the musical revolution she inspired had forgotten her – so Sister Rosetta went to England and played electric guitar for the young blues fans of London and Liverpool. Without Sister Rosetta Tharpe, rock and roll would be a different music. She is the founding mother who gave rock’s founding fathers the idea.
You can still cast your vote for Tharpe for the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame here.
- Ho-Hum (Little Rock)
- Mulehead (Little Rock)
- Black Oak Arkansas
- Techno Squid Eats Parliament (Little Rock)
- Michael Burks (Camden)
- Willie Cobbs (Smale)
- CeDell Davis (Helena)
- Jimmy Driftwood (Mountain View)
- Al Green (Forrest City)
- Jimmy Witherspoon (Gurdon)
- Willie “Big Eyes” Smith (Helena)
- Sonny Burgess (Newport)
- Billy Lee Riley (Pocahontas)
- Junior Wells (West Memphis)
- Walter Norris (Little Rock)
- Pharoah Sanders (Little Rock)
- Art Porter (Little Rock)
- Louis Jordan (Brinkley)
- Charlie Rich (Benton)
- Glen Campbell (Delight)
- Collin Raye (DeQueen)
- Washboard Sam (Wheat Ridge)
