Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Rotunda Online
The Rotunda
Monday, February 24, 2025

Chris Kjorness Redefines Rock History on Radio Show 'With Good Reason'

On Feb. 16, adjunct faculty member Chris Kjorness presented the second step in his campaign to further knowledge of the early rock and gospel scion Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

After his fall 2012 Blackwell talk on Rosetta Tharpe was heard by Longwood University’s Media Specialist Matt McWilliams, Kjorness was given the opportunity to appear on the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities radio show, "With Good Reason."

McWilliams has been in contact with "With Good Reason" host Sarah McConnell who had previously done a show with Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Jeff Halliday, concerning local sports casters and sports media. For some time, McConnell had been interested in expanding the number of Longwood faculty taking part in her broadcasts.

Kjorness, who has taught classes on the world of popular music and been an instructor of guitar and bass at Longwood University for the past four years, has a long and passionate history with his subject matter. He spent most of his early twenties performing and earned a B.A. in Jazz Studies from the University of New Orleans.

He describes New Orleans as a “great place to be at the time,” where “he studied with heroes” such as Ellis Marsalis, Bill Huntington, Steve Lacy and DeLillo Perez. 

After hearing that Lacy and Perez were working at the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston, Kjorness shipped out to study at the conservatory and be a teaching assistant under Ran Blake, an award-winning pianist and composer who is the founding chair of NEC's Contemporary Improvisation department.

Following his time at the conservatory, Kjorness played gigs in Washington, D.C. for half a decade and eventually settled at Longwood University.

Though his studies have been primarily focused on Jazz, Kjorness has recently shifted his interest to popular music and the process by which it evolved from vernacular or folk music.

Concerning Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Kjorness said, “You’ll get one picture of her, one mention of [her] in most books [concerning the development of Rock].” He said that she is most often talked about when people are studying the transition from Gospel to soul music.

However, Kjorness said, “The key thing I’ve been focused on is how important she was to the development of Rock and Roll. Not just so that she gets recognized ... but also [because] changing or elevating her status in the way we view the development of Rock and Roll in some ways changes what the story of Rock and Roll is because so much [of its history] is told as a bunch of men playing the blues. Here you have a woman playing Gospel music.”

To Kjorness, this invalidates “the idea that women were only involved in Rock music ... through the popular world in these girl singing groups like the pre-Motown stuff.”

Kjorness noted that Rosetta “influenced people not only as a guitarist but as a singer. She changes things.”

Among her musical progeny were the scions of Rock, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard who were listed as her favorite artists.

Kjorness said, “Gospel music, particularly music coming out of the Pentecostal Church, had such a strong influence on Rock and Roll because Rock and Roll is not simply the story of white people loosening their social mores ... It’s not just about the sexual element. It’s about them hearing something they’d never heard before ... a new spirit of doing things ... in waking up, going out, being passionate about things.”

Kjorness noted, “The popularity [Sister Rosetta] obtained even as early as the late thirties in the Pentecostal Church was just amazing. She was in New York around the time of the Harlem Renaissance, and she played the Cotton Club and knew people like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.

“After that, she bridged over to making some really great proto-typical rock music. The things she was doing as early as 1947 into the 50s is really Rock music in a lot of ways.”

Her link to Rock music is strengthened by her association to the Jordanaires, the vocal quartet she worked with before they provided vocal background for Elvis Presley. 

“One of their first shows was at the Mosque in Richmond,” Kjorness said. “She was a black woman with white back singers.”

Kjorness marks the radio show as one of the first steps in what he humorously calls his campaign. He first presented information seeking to further the status of Sister Rosetta during his 2012 Blackwell Talk around the Presidential Election and thus came upon the metaphor.

Laughing, Kjorness said, “By God, they took me seriously.”

When asked about the involvement of Longwood professors in media, Kjorness said, “I think it’s important to be part of the public discourse ... No matter what field you’re in, get out there. I’m writing an academic article on Tharpe, and I’m hoping that it gets published somewhere good. [We need] to have Longwood out there in the public eye. We have so many people doing good work and there needs to be more of us out in the public discourse. We’re supposed to be adding to the overall intellectual environment. It’s good to say all this stuff and all of the little books we’re reading apply to [the public].”

To further indulge interest in Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Kjorness recommends Tony Heilbut’s book ‘The Gospel Sound: Good News & Bad Times” and encourages visiting the Women’s & Gender Studies program featuring Tharpe to be held on March 13, from 3 p.m. 3:45 p.m. in the Greenwood Library.