Listen to No Room In The Church For Liars

A singer/guitarist equally fluent in gospel, blues, and jazz, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, like Little Richard and Al Green after her, reflected a quintessentially American artistic tension between the sacred and the profane. This combination of the secular and the holy led to a number of hits in the 1930s and '40s. Her popularity peaked in the '50s, and Tharpe died in 1973 following a stroke.