In 1959, while visiting Chicago, she entered DJ Al Benson's talent show at the Regal Theater, winning for six straight weeks and gaining her a slot on a bill with B.
3 on the Cash Box R&B chart, and became her best known song,[1] later being covered by Dusty Springfield, Jackie Ross, and Shirley Brown among others.
[1] However, in 1971 she developed polyps on her vocal cords, losing her singing voice, and gave up her secular music career.
After recovering her voice she recorded several albums of gospel music, of which the first, The Warning in 1972, featured "I Had A Talk With God Last Night".
[7] She also established a Bible Study Telephone Prayer Line and a community outreach program, "Feed-A-Neighbor" (FAN), for which she received the key to the city of Birmingham in 1987.
She became a preacher, and was ordained in 1989, later being appointed pastor of the More Like Christ (MLC) Christian Fellowship Ministries in Chicago.