However, Tharpe continued to perform in church, as well as in showbiz. They had something, and it was great, but now it was gone. It was hurtful to a lot of people, because they felt as though they had lost something. "It was like a bomb had dropped on gospel music when she flipped," said Tharpe's longtime friend Ira Tucker Jr. She was suddenly in showbiz, and her church-going fans were not too happy about her transition. When Tharpe accepted a job at the prestigious Cotton Club in New York City, she found herself in a new realm of performance, far from the gospel singing of the church. She left him to begin a new life in New York and took her mother with her. She worked for the church under her husband's direction for the next four years, but it is believed he possessed a negative attitude toward women and used Tharpe's musical celebrity for monetary gain. In 1934, when Tharpe was just 19 years old, her mother arranged her marriage to preacher, Reverend Thomas Tharpe.
Her teenage years traveling with her mother to various cities to perform in chapels, churches, and revival groups earned Tharpe nationwide celebrity in the church. Tharpe's musical expression was celebrated and encouraged by her mother and the church congregation, all of whom regarded Tharpe as a musical prodigy. While little else is known of her father, Tharpe's mother left him in 1921 to be a traveling evangelist and took six-year-old Tharpe to Chicago with her, where they soon became members of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC).
Both of her parents taught Tharpe to sing, and she started playing the guitar by age three. Her father played the guitar and harmonica, and her mother, a beloved member of her church community and referred to as Mother Bell, played the piano and mandolin. Atkins, a farm laborer, and Katie Bell Nubin on a farm outside of Cotton Plant in Arkansas on March 20, 1915, Rosetta Tharpe began walking and talking before her first birthday and was musically gifted from an early age.
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