By all rights the name Sister Rosetta Tharpe should have attained household status in the public’s knowledge of American music history. Her singing, guitar playing and songwriting made her the first superstar of gospel music which, as we all know, was the seed bed of rock and roll.
For me, these movies are the cinematic version the old Classics Illustrated comic books. Before I eventually read the Dickens text of “A Tale of Two Cities” in high school, I’d already read the comic book. Ditto “Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman” and a bunch of others.
Most people, no matter how old they are, like to reference their younger days when they were alive and vital and had fun. But an old guy singing about how nobody loves him because he’s sad doesn’t quite do it for me.
By 1962 humans had ventured orbited the earth, the moon race was on and within a few years Captain Kirk would confirm space as our final frontier. It was in July of ‘62 that the promise of world-wide communication via satellite was born with the launch of Telstar.
Let’s go back to an English summer 35 years(!) ago. It’s 1977 and the band is on its “Deceptive Bends” tour. During the course of three June dates at the Odeon Theatre Hammersmith in London, and two nights at the Apollo Theatre in Manchester,
Up until now I’ve used my Sony turntable, but it too has the old RCA plugs. It would only work on our desktop computer and was a bit of a hassle to set up, so I didn’t use it as much as I wanted to. Then I spotted the Ion Quick Flash in Barnes and Noble and snapped it up.
I just love that song- makes me want to dance and cry and laugh and fall in love!!
