@hobbyckts - actually that is why the OP needs to tell us the the slave device as well.
There are SPI interfaces where you can configure the salve to always be active (i.e. to no need to use a chip select).
Also there is the SPI framing mode where either the framing framing master (which can be either the SPI master or slave - it can get very messy!) generates a framing pulse instead of a chip select (and the clock is continuous).
However, what you say is, in my experience, the most usual situation.
Susan