Lizzo is better known for playing the flute than the guitar, but she’ll have to brush up on her six-string skills for her upcoming movie role.
Deadline reports that Lizzo will star as Sister Rosetta Tharpe in an upcoming biopic. Tharpe, who died in 1973, was a Black gospel singer, songwriter and guitarist who influenced and shaped early rock ‘n’ roll artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Her electric guitar playing, in particular, influenced the likes of Eric Clapton and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.
According to Deadline, the movie will depict what it describes as “the first stadium show,” which took place in 1951. Tharpe, who was secretly gay, married her manager Russell Morrison in front of 25,000 paying customers at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. The wedding was then followed by a performance.
Lizzo reposted the Deadline article and captioned it, “Black people made rock n roll yeaaaah.”
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