Cissy Houston, a Grammy-Winning Gospel Singer and Whitney Houston’s Mother, Dies at 91

American gospel singer and author Cissy Houston poses for a portrait in New York on Jan. 22, 2013. The two-time Grammy-winning soul and gospel artist who knew triumph and heartbreak as the mother of Whitney Houston, has died. She was 91. (AP File/Dan Hallman)
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By JONATHAN LANDRUM Jr. and HILLEL ITALIE | Associated Press

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

Cissy Houston died Monday morning in her New Jersey home while under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told The Associated Press. The acclaimed gospel singer was surrounded by her family.

“Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness. We loss the matriarch of our family,” Pat Houston said in a statement. She said her mother-in-law’s contributions to popular music and culture are “unparalleled.”

“Mother Cissy has been a strong and towering figure in our lives. A woman of deep faith and conviction, who cared greatly about family, ministry, and community. Her more than seven-decade career in music and entertainment will remain at the forefront of our hearts.”

A church performer from an early age, Houston was part of a family gospel act before breaking through in popular music in the 1960s as a member of the prominent backing group The Sweet Inspirations with Doris Troy and her niece Dee Dee Warwick. The group sang backup for a variety of soul singers including Otis Redding, Lou Rawls and The Drifters. They also sang backup for Dionne Warwick.

Houston’s many credits included Franklin’s “Think” and ”(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” The Sweet Inspirations also sang on stage with Presley, whom Houston would remember fondly for singing gospel during rehearsal breaks and telling her that she was “squirrelly.”

“At the end of our engagement with him, he gave me a bracelet inscribed with my name on the outside,” she wrote in her memoir “How Sweet the Sound,” published in 1998. “On the inside of the bracelet he had inscribed his nickname for me: Squirrelly.”

The Sweet Inspirations had their own top 20 single with the soul-rock “Sweet Inspiration,” made in the Memphis studio where Franklin and Springfield among others recorded hits and released four albums just in the late ’60s. The group appeared on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and sang background vocals for The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the song “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” in 1967.

Houston’s last performance with The Sweet Inspirations came after the group hit the stage with Presley in a Las Vegas show in 1969. Her final recording session with the group turned into their biggest R&B hit “(Gotta Find) A Brand New Lover” a composition by the production team of Gamble & Huff, who appeared on the group’s fifth album, “Sweet Sweet Soul.”

During that time, the group occasionally performed live concert dates with Franklin. After the group’s success and four albums together, Houston left The Sweet Inspirations to pursue a solo career where she flourished.

Houston became an in-demand session singer and recorded more than 600 songs in multiple genres throughout her career. Her vocals can be heard on tracks alongside a wide range of artists including Chaka Khan, Donny Hathaway, Jimi Hendrix, Luther Vandross, Beyoncé, Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston.

Cissy Houston went on to complete several records, including “Presenting Cissy Houston,” the disco-era “Think It Over” and the Grammy-winning gospel albums “Face to Face” and “He Leadeth Me.”

In 1971, Houston’s signature vocals were featured on Burt Bacharach’s solo album, which includes “Mexican Divorce,” “All Kinds of People” and “One Less Bell to Answer.” She performed various standards including Barbra Streisand’s hit song, “Evergreen.”

Never far from her native New Jersey or musical origins, Houston presided for decades over the 200-member Youth Inspirational Choir at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church, where Whitney Houston sang as a child.

Cissy Houston would say that she had discouraged her daughter from show business, but they were joined in music for much of Whitney’s life, from church to stage performances to television and film and the recording studio. Whitney’s rise seemed inevitable, not only because of her obvious talents, but because of her background: Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick were cousins, Leontyne Price a cousin once removed, Franklin a close family friend.

Singers Cissy Houston, left, and daughter, Whitney, appear at the “Keep A Child Alive Black Ball” in New York on Sept. 30, 2010. (AP File, Evan Agostini)

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

They would sing together often in concert and appeared in the 1996 film “The Preacher’s Wife.” Their most indelible moments likely came from the video for one of Whitney’s biggest hits from the mid-1980s, “Greatest 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 in the wings.

But drug problems damaged Whitney’s voice and reputation and eventually ended her life: she was found dead in a Beverly Hills bathtub on Feb. 11, 2012. Cissy Houston would blame husband Bobby Brown for Whitney’s getting so “deep” into drugs, writing in the 2013 memoir “Remembering Whitney.” Brown acknowledged his drug problems but was dismissive of his in-laws in a 2016 interview with Larry King.

Cissy and Whitney Houston had a complicated dynamic at times — Whitney nicknamed her mother “Big Cuda,” as in barracuda. Cissy described in the memoir that her daughter as “mean” and “difficult” at times but wrote “almost always,” her daughter was “the sweetest, most loving person in the room.”

In 2015, Cissy Houston was grieving again when granddaughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only child of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, was found unconscious in a bathtub, spent months in a coma and died at age 22.

Cissy Houston was briefly married to Freddie Garland in the 1950s; their son, Gary Garland, was a guard for the Denver Nuggets and later sang on many of Whitney Houston’s tours. Cissy Houston was married to Whitney’s father, entertainment executive John Russell Houston, from 1959-1990. In addition to Whitney, the Houstons also had a son, Michael.

Cissy Houston was born Emily Drinkard in Newark, the youngest of eight children of a factory worker and a housewife. She was just 5 when she and three siblings founded the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group that lasted 30 years, performing on the same bill as Mahalia Jackson among others and releasing the 1959 album “A Joyful Noise.”

She later said she would have been happy to remain in gospel, but John Houston encouraged her to take on studio work. When rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins (along with drummer Levon Helm and other future members of The Band) needed an extra voice, Cissy Houston stepped in.

“I wanted to get my work done, and get it done quickly. I was there, but I didn’t have to be part of them. I was in the world, but I wasn’t of the world, as St. Paul put it,” Houston wrote in “How Sweet the Sound,” remembering how she soon began working with the Drifters and other singers.

“At least in the recording studio we were living together as God intended us to. Some days, we spent 12 or 15 hours together there,” she wrote. “The skin-deep barriers of race seemed to fall away as we toiled side by side creating our little pop masterpieces.”

Pat Houston said she is thankful for the many valuable lessons learned from her mother-in-law. She said the family feels “blessed and grateful” that God allowed Cissy to spend so many years.

“We are touched by your generous support, and your outpouring of love during our profound time of grief,” Houston said on behalf of the family. “We respectfully request our privacy during this difficult time.”

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