“Our hearts are full of pain and sadness. We lost the mother of our family,” her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told the AP agency, according to which the renowned gospel singer died surrounded by her family.
“Cissy’s mother was a strong and prominent figure in our lives. She was a woman of deep faith and conviction. She cared a lot about family, service and community,” she added, adding that her family will remember her musical career spanning more than seven decades.
Cissy Houston in a picture from 2013
Cissy Houston began her career in the middle of the last century as a gospel singer. In the 1960s, however, she moved from spiritual music to soul and pop and began to appear in the accompanying groups of prominent solo singers.
For many years she worked in the group The Sweet Inspirations, which accompanied, for example, Otis Redding, Van Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. The recordings on which her voice is heard include, for example, Van Morrison’s composition Brown Eyed Girl or Dusty Springfield’s song Son of a Preacher Man.
Houston became a highly sought-after backing singer and sang on 600 songs during her career. She won both of her Grammy awards for the genre from which she emerged: for two albums of gospel songs, Face to Face and He Leadeth Me.
In the 1970s, she also brought her daughter Whitney to the church choir, whose fame later significantly surpassed that of Cissy Houston. Little Whitney’s godmother was soul diva Aretha Franklin, with whom Cissy’s mother also sang.
Her daughter Whitney died in 2012 at the age of 48 by accidental drowning in the bathtub of a hotel suite, but heart disease and cocaine, of which the singer was a chronic user, also contributed to her death. The career of the talented six-time Grammy winner was heavily affected by the collapse of marriage, alcohol and drugs.