Cissy Houston, a Grammy-winning gospel singer and Whitney Houston’s mother, dies at 91

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cissy Houston, a two-time Grammy-winning soul and gospel artist who sang with Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and different stars and knew triumph and heartbreak because the mom of Whitney Houston, has died. She was 91.

Cissy Houston died Monday morning in her New Jersey dwelling whereas beneath hospice take care of Alzheimer’s illness, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston advised The Related Press. The acclaimed gospel singer was surrounded by her household.

“Our hearts are full of ache and disappointment. We loss the matriarch of our household,” Pat Houston mentioned in a press release. She mentioned her mother-in-law’s contributions to well-liked music and tradition are “unparalleled.”

“Mom Cissy has been a powerful and towering determine in our lives. A girl of deep religion and conviction, who cared vastly about household, ministry, and neighborhood. Her greater than seven-decade profession in music and leisure will stay on the forefront of our hearts.”

A church performer from an early age, Houston was a part of a household gospel act earlier than breaking via in well-liked music within the Nineteen Sixties as a member of the outstanding backing group The Candy Inspirations with Doris Troy and her niece Dee Dee Warwick. The group sang backup for a wide range of soul singers together with Otis Redding, Lou Rawls and The Drifters. Additionally they sang backup for Dionne Warwick.

Houston’s many credit included Franklin’s “Assume” and ”(You Make Me Really feel Like) A Pure Lady,” Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Woman” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” The Candy Inspirations additionally sang on stage with Presley, whom Houston would bear in mind fondly for singing gospel throughout rehearsal breaks and telling her that she was “squirrelly.”

“On the finish of our engagement with him, he gave me a bracelet inscribed with my identify on the skin,” she wrote in her memoir “How Candy the Sound,” printed in 1998. “On the within of the bracelet he had inscribed his nickname for me: Squirrelly.”

The Candy Inspirations had their very own high 20 single with the soul-rock “Candy Inspiration,” made within the Memphis studio the place Franklin and Springfield amongst others recorded hits and launched 4 albums simply within the late ’60s. The group appeared on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Woman” and sang background vocals for The Jimi Hendrix Expertise on the track “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” in 1967.

Houston’s final efficiency with The Candy Inspirations got here after the group hit the stage with Presley in a Las Vegas present in 1969. Her remaining recording session with the group become their greatest R&B hit “(Gotta Discover) A Model New Lover” a composition by the manufacturing crew of Gamble & Huff, who appeared on the group’s fifth album, “Candy Candy Soul.”

Throughout that point, the group sometimes carried out reside live performance dates with Franklin. After the group’s success and 4 albums collectively, Houston left The Candy Inspirations to pursue a solo profession the place she flourished.

Houston grew to become an in-demand session singer and recorded greater than 600 songs in a number of genres all through her profession. Her vocals may be heard on tracks alongside a variety of artists together with Chaka Khan, Donny Hathaway, Jimi Hendrix, Luther Vandross, Beyoncé, Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston.

Cissy Houston went on to finish a number of data, together with “Presenting Cissy Houston,” the disco-era “Assume It Over” and the Grammy-winning gospel albums “Face to Face” and “He Leadeth Me.”

In 1971, Houston’s signature vocals have been featured on Burt Bacharach’s solo album, which incorporates “Mexican Divorce,” “All Sorts of Individuals” and “One Much less Bell to Reply.” She carried out varied requirements together with Barbra Streisand’s hit track, “Evergreen.”

By no means removed from her native New Jersey or musical origins, Houston presided for many years over the 200-member Youth Inspirational Choir at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church, the place Whitney Houston sang as a toddler.

Cissy Houston would say that she had discouraged her daughter from present enterprise, however they have been joined in music for a lot of Whitney’s life, from church to stage performances to tv and movie and the recording studio. Whitney’s rise appeared inevitable, not solely due to her apparent abilities, however due to her background: Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick have been cousins, Leontyne Worth a cousin as soon as eliminated, Franklin a detailed household pal.

Whitney Houston made her debut on nationwide tv when she and Cissy Houston sang a medley of Franklin hits on “The Merv Griffin Present.” Cissy Houston sang backup on Whitney’s eponymous, multi-platinum first album, and the 2 shared the lead on “I Know Him So Nicely,” from the 1987 mega-seller “Whitney.”

They’d sing collectively typically in live performance and appeared within the 1996 movie “The Preacher’s Spouse.” Their most indelible moments possible got here from the video for one in every of Whitney’s greatest hits from the mid-Nineteen Eighties, “Biggest Love of All.” It was filmed as a mother-daughter homage, ending with a joyous Whitney exiting the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater and embracing Cissy Houston, who stood within the wings.

However drug issues broken Whitney’s voice and fame and finally ended her life: she was discovered useless in a Beverly Hills bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012. Cissy Houston would blame husband Bobby Brown for Whitney’s getting so “deep” into medicine, writing within the 2013 memoir “Remembering Whitney.” Brown acknowledged his drug issues however was dismissive of his in-laws in a 2016 interview with Larry King.

Cissy and Whitney Houston had an advanced dynamic at occasions — Whitney nicknamed her mom “Huge Cuda,” as in barracuda. Cissy described within the memoir that her daughter as “imply” and “tough” at occasions however wrote “virtually at all times,” her daughter was “the sweetest, most loving particular person within the room.”

In 2015, Cissy Houston was grieving once more when granddaughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, the one youngster of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, was discovered unconscious in a bath, spent months in a coma and died at age 22.

Cissy Houston was briefly married to Freddie Garland within the Fifties; their son, Gary Garland, was a guard for the Denver Nuggets and later sang on a lot of Whitney Houston’s excursions. Cissy Houston was married to Whitney’s father, leisure govt John Russell Houston, from 1959-1990. Along with Whitney, the Houstons additionally had a son, Michael.

Cissy Houston was born Emily Drinkard in Newark, the youngest of eight youngsters of a manufacturing facility employee and a housewife. She was simply 5 when she and three siblings based the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group that lasted 30 years, acting on the identical invoice as Mahalia Jackson amongst others and releasing the 1959 album “A Joyful Noise.”

She later mentioned she would have been joyful to stay in gospel, however John Houston inspired her to tackle studio work. When rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins (together with drummer Levon Helm and different future members of The Band) wanted an additional voice, Cissy Houston stepped in.

“I wished to get my work achieved, and get it achieved rapidly. I used to be there, however I didn’t need to be a part of them. I used to be on the earth, however I wasn’t of the world, as St. Paul put it,” Houston wrote in “How Candy the Sound,” remembering how she quickly started working with the Drifters and different singers.

“Not less than within the recording studio we have been dwelling collectively as God supposed us to. Some days, we spent 12 or 15 hours collectively there,” she wrote. “The skin-deep boundaries of race appeared to fall away as we toiled facet by facet creating our little pop masterpieces.”

Pat Houston mentioned she is grateful for the various worthwhile classes realized from her mother-in-law. She mentioned the household feels “blessed and grateful” that God allowed Cissy to spend so a few years.

“We’re touched by your beneficiant assist, and your outpouring of affection throughout our profound time of grief,” Houston mentioned on behalf of the household. “We respectfully request our privateness throughout this tough time.”

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Hillel Italie reported from New York.