New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Sparkle Moore
"'For sixty years, conventional wisdom has told us that women generally did not perform rock and roll during the 1950s,' writes Leah Branstetter, Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Case Western Reserve University. Like so many cultural forms into which we are initiated, through education, personal interest, and general osmosis, this popular form of Western music—now a genre with seventy years under its belt—has functioned as an almost ideal example of the great man theory of history. ... The recognition of rare exceptions, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, does not challenge the rule. But Branstetter’s Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave project almost single-handedly does. ..."
Open Culture (Audio)
Women in Rock & Roll’s First Wave

Sister Rosetta Tharpe