Sure, Kei­th Richards bor­rowed some of his best licks from Chuck Berry. But do you know who Chuck Berry bor­rowed from? Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe. Tharpe was one of the pio­neers of 20th cen­tu­ry music, a flam­boy­ant, larg­er-than-life fig­ure who fused gospel and blues into some­thing new. “Lis­ten to her record­ings,” said singer-song­writer Joan Osborne, “and you can hear all the build­ing blocks of rock and roll.” Lit­tle Richard, Elvis Pres­ley and John­ny Cash each named Tharpe as one of their fond­est child­hood influ­ences. “Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe was any­thing but ordi­nary and plain,” said Bob Dylan on his radio pro­gram. “She was a big, good-look­ing woman and divine, not to men­tion sub­lime and splen­did. She was a pow­er­ful force of nature–a gui­tar-play­ing, singing evan­ge­list.”

Yet despite the enor­mi­ty of her influ­ence, Tharpe has been vir­tu­al­ly for­got­ten by the main­stream cul­ture. For many years fol­low­ing her death in 1973, she lay in an unmarked grave. In the last decade, though, there has been a slow resur­gence of appre­ci­a­tion for Tharpe. In 2004 Osborne, Maria Mul­daur, Bon­nie Rait and oth­er artists joined togeth­er for a trib­ute album called Shout, Sis­ter, Shout! A biog­ra­phy of the same name, by Gayle Wald, was pub­lished in 2007. And in 2011–the same year Tharpe’s grave final­ly received a head­stone, thanks to a fundrais­ing con­cert– film­mak­er Mike Csaky direct­ed a doc­u­men­tary called The God­moth­er of Rock & Roll: Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, which aired this Feb­ru­ary on PBS as part of the Amer­i­can Mas­ters series. You can watch the full 53-minute film below.

And for a quick exam­ple of Tharpe’s stun­ning artistry and stage pres­ence, you can start by watch­ing the short clip above, from a 1960s Sun­day-morn­ing tele­vi­sion pro­gram pro­duced in Chica­go and dis­trib­uted by NBC called TV Gospel Time, in which Tharpe sings the gospel stan­dard “Up Above My Head.” Sources dif­fer on the exact year of the per­for­mance (TV Gospel Time was broad­cast from late 1962 until 1966.) but PBS gives it as 1964–1965. Two-thirds of the way into the song is the famous elec­tric gui­tar solo that was fea­tured in the French film Amelie. “Tharpe did­n’t just play the gui­tar,” writes her biog­ra­ph­er Wald, “she owned it. Like a snake-charmer, she coaxed sounds out of the instru­ments, turn­ing wood and met­al into lome­thing alive yet com­plete­ly under her con­trol. her con­tem­po­raries referred to this as mak­ing a gui­tar ‘talk.’ Some­times, too, they said she played ‘like a man,’ as though a woman was­n’t capa­ble of pro­ject­ing such command–or a woman-in-gospel con­vey­ing such pal­pa­ble eroti­cism.”

Also fea­tur­ing Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe:

“Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964”

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

From the album that launched a mil­lion bands to pos­si­bly the worst rap song of all time—from per­fect, career-reviv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions to abysmal career-killing ones—Lou Reed’s rock and roll run has seen its share of highs and rock-bot­tom lows. Reed war­rants com­par­i­son with Neil Young for his longevi­ty, hit-and-miss pro­lif­ic out­put, and gad­fly abil­i­ty to flit from project to project, sound to sound, while still sound­ing dis­tinc­tive­ly him­self. And like Young, there are too many phas­es, too many albums, great and ter­ri­ble, to real­ly do the life’s work jus­tice in any one ret­ro­spec­tive.

But the 1998 doc­u­men­tary above, from the PBS Amer­i­can Master’s series, makes an admirable attempt. Called Rock and Roll Heart after Reed’s 1976 album and sin­gle of the same name, the film lets Reed tell much of his own sto­ry: his teenage years as a devo­tee of 50s rock and doo wop, his col­lege-days asso­ci­a­tion with poet Del­more Schwartz, episodes in his life that very much came to define his art, which mar­ries a fine­ly-tuned lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ty to the sim­plic­i­ty and tune­ful­ness of clas­sic rock and roll. Reed’s warped, lyri­cal takes on streetlife psy­chodra­ma and his love for drone notes and feed­back, how­ev­er, took rock song­writ­ing places it had nev­er been before. At the open­ing of the film, Reed deliv­ers an epi­gram­mat­ic gem about him­self: “I dis­liked groups, dis­liked author­i­ty. Uh… I was made for rock and roll.”

Reed’s dis­like of groups trans­lates through­out his career into a rep­u­ta­tion for dif­fi­cul­ty that sent col­lab­o­ra­tors run­ning from him, either because he fired them (as he most famous­ly did to the bril­liant John Cale) or because they’d had enough of his ego­tism. Nonethe­less, many of those same people—Cale included—came back to work with Reed again. Cale shows up above, telling sto­ries of the gen­e­sis of The Vel­vet Underground—of him and Reed play­ing “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Hero­in” on a Harlem street­corner on vio­la and acoustic gui­tar. Oth­er con­fr­eres of Reed’s genius also appear in inter­views: Velvet’s drum­mer Mau­reen Tuck­er, David Bowie, Pat­ti Smith, Jim Car­roll, Philip Glass, and of course the man Reed cred­its most for his suc­cess, Andy Warhol, in archival footage from 1966.

The love/hate pair­ing of The Vel­vets and Nico gets an air­ing, and there’s loads of film of Lou per­form­ing, but at 73 min­utes, Rock and Roll Heart feels a lit­tle thin, and its tone is almost entire­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry, elid­ing the musi­cal low points (like the stab at rap) and end­ing with Reed’s for­ays into the­ater with Time Rock­er. But these are for­giv­able flaws. There’s no way to cov­er all the ground Reed’s bro­ken (he’s released an album rough­ly every year since 1972). And at 71 (if he can recov­er from that Metal­li­ca mash-up), he’s still at it—as he says in an inter­view above, until he dies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness