Sam Phillips Songs - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us Lyrics

Sam Phillips - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us

Sam Phillips - Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Don't Do Anything
Released: 2008

Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us Lyrics

Strange things are happening everyday
I hear the music up above my head
Oh the side of my heart has left me again
I hear music up above

Secrets are written in the sky
It looks like I've lost the love I've never found
Tho the sound of hope has left me again
I hear music up above

Standing in the my broken heart all night long
Dark and silky like a friend where love wore off
Looking for the land that's hidden in the cross
Find it's lost

I know, I love you too much
I'll go on alone, to get through

I hear Rosetta singing in the night
Echoes of light that shine like stars after they're gone
And tonight, she's my guide as I go on alone
With the music above

Writer/s: SAM PHILLIPS
Publisher: DOWNTOWN MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the inspiration for this song, was an influential guitarist and singer of the '30s and '40s who turned the Gospel genre on its head with her infusion of Blues and Jazz with traditional spiritual music. Some of her notable hits were "This Train," "Down By the Riverside" and "Strange Things Happening Every Day." The latter influenced the lyrics of Sam Phillips' song, as she explained in her Songfacts interview:

"'Up above my head, I hear music in the air, there's strange things happening every day.' I was using her to talk about the things that we can't see that happen all around us - the inspiration, the good things that happen to us all the time, and where do those things come from? I think through music and art is how we get to ecstatic experiences. There are other ways, too, but I think for us the familiar ways are through music and art."

Although Phillips penned the song, it was recorded by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for their Raising Sand album in 2007, a year before Phillips' own version was released (the Plant/Krauss collaboration also won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year). As Phillips tells it, she had a conversation with Plant where he told her that Sister Rosetta Tharpe once asked him - in his pre-Zeppelin days - to join her on tour.