Cissy Houston, the Grammy-winning gospel singer and Whitney Houston’s mother, died Monday in New Jersey. She was 91.
The singer was in hospice, where she was receiving care for Alzheimer’s disease, at the time of her death. The Associated Press reports that she was surrounded by her family. “Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness,” Houston’s daughter-in-law, Pat Houston, said in a statement. “We lost the matriarch of our family. … 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.”
The youngest of eight children, Houston — who was born Emily Drinkard on Sept. 30, 1933 — began her musical career in 1938 as part of the vocal group the Drinkard Four alongside her sister Anne and brothers Larry and Nicky. She married a man named Freddie Garland in the mid Fifties and after a divorce married John Houston Jr. in the mid Sixties. The couple divorced in the Nineties.
Later, as a member of the Sweet Inspirations, Houston provided background vocals for Otis Redding and Dionne Warwick (who was Houston’s niece), among others. The also recorded backing vocals on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl,” the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” and Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way.” In 1969, they were part of Elvis Presley’s band during one of his Las Vegas residencies. The group’s “Sweet Inspiration” was a Number 18 hit, and their self-titled LP, 1967’s The Sweet Inspirations, made it up to Number 90 on the albums chart.
Houston released her first solo album, Presenting Cissy Houston, in 1970. In the years that followed, she established herself as a vocal powerhouse, singing soul, R&B, gospel, and disco music. Decades later, she won two Grammy Awards in the Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album category, in 1997 for Face to Face and in 1999 for He Leadeth Me. Throughout her career, she also contributed vocals to recordings by Chaka Khan, Paul Simon, Luther Vandross, and Beyoncé; AP reports she can be heard on more than 600 recordings.
For more than half a century, Houston served as Minister of Music at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church. She also supported McDonald’s Gospelfest, an annual event held in Newark since the early Eighties.
Houston, a mother of three, gave birth to Whitney in 1963. She was supportive of the singer’s career throughout her life and even appeared in Whitney’s videos for “Greatest Love of All” and “I’m Every Woman.” She also had a role in The Preacher’s Wife, Penny Marshall’s movie, which starred Whitney.
After Whitney’s death in 2012, Cissy became a fierce protector of her daughter’s memory. She was fiercely critical of films she felt misrepresented Whitney’s life, including a Lifetime biopic and the documentary Whitney. In 2013, Cissy published a memoir, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Life, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped.
Cissy also authored two other books about her relationship to music and religion: He Leadeth Me and How Sweet the Sound: My Life With God and Gospel. In 1998, she reflected on how the spotlight found her later in her life in a Jet magazine cover story. “A lot of the things I’ve done have come late in life, and it’s like a whole new career starting up,” she said. “I don’t have regrets about the way I planned and lived my life, and I am very proud of what I’ve become.”
