Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Come by Here

Topic: Theology
Holiness was a Methodist movement, and Pentecostalism was a reaction against Methodist protocols. Even though many Baptist groups already had rituals for contacting the Holy Spirit, they were not immune to the attractions of Holiness theology.

Charles Harrison Mason was raised as a Baptist in the Memphis, Tennessee, area in the years immediate following the Civil War. He was baptized in 1880, and entered Arkansas Baptist College to train for the ministry. He left after a few months because he did not like its formal approach to religion. [1]

His interest in sanctification was intensified by reading the autobiography of Amanda Berry Smith, a Black woman who had become a Holiness leader. In 1897, he attended a regional conference in Jackson, Mississippi, led by Charles Price Jones. [2]

Jones had been born at the end of the Civil War in northwestern Georgia, where his mother had been a slave. After she died in 1882, he moved to Chattanooga, then, after a brief spell in Kansas City, to Memphis in 1884. That same year he was converted by Baptists, and began preaching. [3]

He began to feel "as a Baptist, I had doctrinal assurance, but I wanted spiritual assurance, heart peace, rest of the soul, the joy of salvation in the understanding of a new heart, a new mind, a new spirit, constantly renewed and comforted by the Holy Ghost." In 1893, "after three days of fasting and praying ‘God sanctified me sweetly in his love’." [4]

The Jackson meeting was called after the General Missionary Baptist Association met in Jones’ church to discuss problems caused by recent segregation laws. [5] Jones and Mason felt the church was too concerned with social problems, and not enough with religious ones. They issued The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Churches, [6] and Mason chartered the Church of God in Christ in Memphis under Tennessee law. [7]

Baptists expelled them in 1899. By 1906, the COGIC fellowship counted more than a hundred congregations in "Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and Missouri. Almost 50 percent of the churches were in Mississippi." Jones was the General Overseer; Mason had responsibility for Tennessee. [8]

When news of Azusa Street reached the group, Mason and two others went out to investigate. Mason spoke in tongues, and returned convinced of the rightness of Seymour’s ideas. Other members of COGIC disagreed, and formed separate churches, all with very similar names. [9] Jones called his the Church of God in Christ (Holiness). [10]

Jones used the term sanctification without reference to Wesley. His second birth was preceded by the African ritual of going into the wilderness. [11] Thus, his concept of "righteousness" was grafted onto Baptist practice using the popular term. Besides providing a link between Baptists and Holiness, his other contribution to the religious experience was the use of song. He published two collections of his hymns. [12]

Because the COGIC lacked the inhibitions of Methodists who feared physical movement and emotional modes of expression, it was more open to music borrowed from the secular world than groups like the Seventh-day Adventists. Their best known musician, Rosetta Thorpe, played electric guitar.

Her technique contributed to the development of urban blues, and her version of "Come by Here" was based loosely on the recording by Lightnin’ Hopkins. It began with the guitar and an electric organ playing the verse through with a drum set. After four sung verses, she played the verse on the guitar. Then, a string bass played a verse, and the organ followed.

The instrumental passage divided the prelude from the denouement. In the first part, she adhered to the verse form, though she included repetitions of key words that lengthened the lines. Tharpe spoke, rather than sang, some words. The constant rhythmic support from the organ and drum made these variations possible.

In the denouement, she did one verse in which she started the line "come on Jesus" and the instruments completed it. Then she spoke a verse in rhymed lines that explicated why they needed Jesus to appear. This was followed by a third verse that repeated phrases within lines. Tharpe ended by just saying "come" with the guitar completing her thought.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Rosetta Tharpe
Vocal Group: none
Vocal Director: none

Instrumental Accompaniment: electric guitar, organ, string bass, piano

Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English

Pronunciation: sometimes Tharpe did not pronounce the /d/ in "Lord"; at least once she repeated "here" as "he Are"; she said "ja" for "you."

Verses: come by here, needed time, need you

Vocabulary
Pronoun: we
Term for Deity: Lord, Jesus
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: free-form based on the AAAB line-repetition pattern

Verse Repetition Pattern: none
Ending: none

Literary Devices: one verse with three unique lines had an AAA rhyme pattern

Unique Features: no strict poetic meter; repeated phrases within lines extended their length

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-5
Tempo: upbeat

Basic Structure: vocal sections alternated with instrumental ones

Singing Style: Tharpe held words like "Oh Lord" and varied their pitch. She switched between singing and speaking the melody.

Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: when she was singing, the instrumental group played a simple accompaniment. She played some solo lines, but also let other players demonstrate their talents.

Notes on Performers
Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915. [13] By then, COGIC had some presence in the market town in the Arkansas river delta some eighty miles from Memphis. [14] Her mother, apparently, was already an evangelist for the denomination. [15] The church did not allow women to become pastors or elders, but allowed them every other religious role, including holding revivals. [16]

Katie Bell Nubin moved to Chicago in 1920, where Rosetta performed in the local church. From there they begin working with a touring revivalist, P. W. McGhee. Friends recommended they move to New York, which they did in the mid-1930s. [17] Tharpe made her first commercial recording in 1938. [18]

She and her mother appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Her mother died the next year, [19] and was memorialized in the Precious Memories album that included Tharpe’s version of "Come by Here."

Availability
Album: Precious Memories. Savoy Records MG-14214. 1968. New York, late 1968. [20]

Reissue: Precious Memories. Savagos RI 5008. 1984. [21]

Reissue: Precious Memories. Savoy Records SCD 5008. 1997. [22]

YouTube: uploaded by Malaco Records on 18 November 2017.

End Notes
1. Mary Menefee. "Charles Harrison Mason 1866–1961." Encyclopedia of Arkansas. 27 October 2016.

2. Menefee.

3. J. H. Green. "Introduction." vii-xvi in Charles P. Jones. An Appeal to the Sons of Africa. Jackson, Mississippi: Truth Publishing Company, 1902. On birth, vii; on events after 1882, viii.

4. Charles Price Jones. Quoted by Calvin White, Jr. The Rise to Respectability. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2012. No pages or footnotes in online version.

5. Mississippi had removed Black children from white schools in 1890, and, in 1896, went further and decreed separate financial support with separate school districts. ("Mississippi Jim Crow Laws: Mississippi Close." Bringing History Home website. 2005.)

6. White. Chapter 1.

7. Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 71.

8. David D. Daniels III. "Church of Christ (Holiness)." 219-220 in The Mississippi Encyclopedia. Edited by Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017. 219.

9. Menefee.

10. Estrelda Y. Alexander. Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. Downers Grove, Illinois: InverVarsity Press, 2011. 96.

11. Joanna Moore, a white Northern missionary who knew Jones in Arkansas, noted African-American Baptists believed to be "forgiven, the sinner must spend long days in prayers and tears." Moore. "In Christ's Stead." Chicago: Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society, 1902. 183.

12. White.

13. Gayle Wald. "Timeline: The Years of Sister Rosetta Tharpe." PBS American Masters website. 28 December 2012.

14. Wikipedia. "Woodruff County, Arkansas."

15. Gayle F. Wald did the most thorough research into Tharpe’s life in Cotton Plant. She made no mention of how Tharpe’s mother or father were converted, nor did she record if an actual church existed in the town or if they attended revivals. Shout Sister Shout! Boston: Beacon Press, 2007.

16. Wikipedia. "Church of God in Christ." Like many denominations, this exclusion of women has been challenged, and one person estimated "50 to 60 women" were serving as pastors in 1998. (John Dart. "Stage Set for Challenge to Church Policy on Women Pastors." Los Angeles Times website. 26 July 1998).

17. Horace Clarence Boyer. The Golden Age of Gospel. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995. 154-155.

18. Cedric J. Hayes and Robert Laughton. The Gospel Discography, 1943-1970. Vancouver, British Columbia: Eyeball Productions, 2007. Reproduced by Robert Termorshuizenon Record Connexion website.

18. Wald, Timeline.
19. Haynes.
20. "Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Precious Memories." Discogs website.
21. Discogs.