Strange Things Happening Every Day
Sister Rosetta Tharpe completely ignored the boundary between the sacred and the secular. In the fall of 1944, the gospel star walked into a New York studio alongside boogie-woogie pianist Sammy Price. On "Strange Things Happening Every Day," Tharpe sang a traditional spiritual, but she attacked her electric guitar with a heavy, swinging, syncopated rhythm that sounded exactly like early rock and roll. The joyous, propulsive track reached number two on the Billboard race chart, becoming one of the first gospel records to cross over commercially, proving that religious fervor could drive a massive pop hit.
The floating-verse lineage for this recording (who else recorded it, where the melody or lyric traveled, and how it was adapted) is still being mapped. This section will trace the song's DNA across the archive.
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