Gospel
The 8 Best Gospel
Tracks of All Time
Blues technique applied to sacred words, codified in Chicago churches from the early thirties. The training ground for almost every great American voice of the next fifty years, and the source of the vocabulary soul secularised.
- Origin
- Chicago and the American South, 1932
- Tempo
- 60–140 BPM
- Also known as
- black gospel, quartet gospel, spirituals, sanctified
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-30
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Number 1: Mahalia Jackson / Move On Up a Little Higher
1947 · Apollo
It sold in the millions when gospel records were not supposed to sell at all. Jackson refused every offer to sing secular material, and never needed to.
Number 2: Sister Rosetta Tharpe / Strange Things Happening Every Day
1944 · Decca
A distorted electric guitar, a boogie piano and a gospel lyric, a decade before anyone said rock and roll. The most consequential record almost nobody credits.
Number 3: The Soul Stirrers / Touch the Hem of His Garment
1956 · Specialty
Sam Cooke while he was still singing for the church, and already in complete command. Listen to this and then to A Change Is Gonna Come — the technique does not change at all.
Number 4: Clara Ward & The Ward Singers / How I Got Over
1951
Ward wrote it, sang the lead over her own group's responses, and sold a million copies. The call-and-response architecture every soul record on this site borrows.
Number 5: The Edwin Hawkins Singers / Oh Happy Day
1969 · Pavilion
A choir arrangement of an eighteenth-century hymn that became an international pop hit without changing a word. Nobody has repeated the trick since.
Number 6: Rev. James Cleveland / Peace Be Still
1963 · Savoy
Recorded live with a congregation audibly losing composure. The best argument on this list that a gospel record is a documentary rather than a performance.
Number 7: The Dixie Hummingbirds / Let's Go Out to the Programs
1953 · Peacock
A quartet impersonating four rival quartets in turn, then themselves. Funny, technically astonishing, and a half-million seller — gospel was a competitive sport and this is the scoreboard.
Number 8: The Staple Singers / I'll Take You There
1972 · Stax
The border crossed in both directions at once: a gospel family, a Muscle Shoals rhythm section, and a lyric that never names what it is about.