Global Hit

The subject of today’s Global Hit was born in Peru to British missionary parents.

They worked in small churches in Lima and Cuzco. The father was a preacher. The mother, a health care worker.

It’s hard to tell how much of that was a factor in getting singer-songwriter Beth Rowley to channel a bluesy gospel sound.

Beth Rowley was a year old when she and her parents returned to Bristol, England.

They still went to church on Sundays, but her dad became an electrician.

Eventually Beth Rowley stopped going to church.

And as she told a British newspaper a few months ago, the biggest influence religion had on her was to turn her on to gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson.

The tunes on Beth Rowley’s just released CD Little Dreamer run from jazzy torch songs to rock.

She knocks out one distinctly gospel track.

It’s an arrangement of the traditional “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

Extra credit for you listeners out there who can name the other artist we featured this year who performed it on our program.

From the Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH in Boston, I’m Marco Werman.