Veteran actress, writer and producer Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and rock legend Mick Jagger will be behind a new project highlighting an unsung pioneer – Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock and Roll.”
Produced by Tribeca Studios, Jagged Films, and Inaudible Productions, the film will center on the trailblazer’s influence in rock and blues. Rising to fame in the ’30s and ’40s, Tharpe sang gospel songs while playing her electric guitar. Her work influenced early rock and rollers such as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley.
The film aims to bring Tharpe’s story, one that has lived in the margins of music history, to the forefront. She died in 1973 and was only inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame posthumously in 2018.
Ellis-Taylor, best known for her searing performances in King Richard, Origin, and When They See Us, has garnered critical acclaim for her depictions of Black women throughout different eras of American history onscreen. The Oscar nominee has starred in numerous projects across film, television and theater earning her several accolades.
As Live Nation Productions noted, “after collaborating with Ellis-Taylor as an actor, the producers were introduced to her work as a screenwriter and moved by her deep, personal connection to Tharpe’s story.”
“With six guitar strings and an amplifier as a battering ram, Sister Rosetta Tharpe knocked down the Jericho walls of convention and respectability,” Ellis-Taylor observed in a statement to Deadline. “I’m thrilled to partner with Tribeca, Jagged Films and Inaudible Films to usher, Sister Rosetta, a queer woman shaped in the pews of the BlackSouth, to the screen.”
Shout, Sister, Shout!
Aside from having estate support and having the rights to Tharpe’s catalog, the producers for this project also have the rights to Gayle Wald’s biography, Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The companion documentary, also in pre-production, will “feature her beloved music catalog and explore Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s legacy through interviews with friends, collaborators, music scholars, and proteges, including Wald’s exclusive recordings with Gospel singer Marie Knight, Tharpe’s closest friend and collaborator.”