Ain’t No Grave Hold My Body Down

  1. Ain't No Grave Hold My Body Down Sister Rosetta Tharpe 2:54

Embed

Copy and paste this code to your site to embed.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was soooo kewl.  In the 40’s and 50’s this woman was on the cutting edge of fusing gospel with blues and rock ‘n roll.  With her great guitar style (sometimes slightly out of tune…not sure if by design or not) she sang some wonderful gospel songs.

This song has an interesting background.  It was written in 1935 by a 12 year old white boy named Clyde Eli who had tuberculosis.  Story goes that after his family prayed for him one day he spontaneously began to sing this song.  His version of course was a pure southern gospel version and he didn’t record the song until 1953.

In 1946 Sister Rosetta got a hold of the song and turned it into her own version with a bluesy barrel house roll style led by her wonderful guitar lead.  This cut was recorded in 1956, live in England as part of a tour called “The American Folk Blues Festival”.

If you like this, you’ll LOVE seeing her perform “Didn’t It Rain” at the same live performance that was filmed on the platform outside an old train station near Manchester England.  Her guitar playing and facial expressions are priceless.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.