Marie and Rosetta at Atlas Performing Arts Center

Bringing fierce guitar playing and swing to gospel music that would become a rhythmic precursor to rock and roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a pioneer of mid-20th-century music with a huge influence on Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and Ray Charles. Set in the showroom of a funeral home, in 1946 Mississippi, Marie and Rosetta chronicles the unlikely first rehearsal between Rosetta and the prim young, Marie Knight. In this musical celebration of two extraordinary black women, they put their heads together to see if the potential protegee could summon the stuff to allow for a professional partnership that might topple the male stranglehold suppressing Rosetta's career. Delve into the roots of rock at D.C.'s Atlas Performing Arts Center.