Cissy Houston, a Grammy-Award-winning singer and the mother of Whitney Houston, has died. She was 91.
Houston died Monday morning surrounded by family in her New Jersey home, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told The Associated Press. She had been under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease.
The singer was born Emily Drinkard in Newark on Sept. 30, 1933. The youngest of eight children, she got her start in the music industry at an early age, performing with siblings Anne, Larry and Nicky as The Drinkard Four. The group later added more members and was rechristened The Drinkard Singers. In 1957, their album “A Joyful Noise” was released by RCA Records and became the first gospel record put out by a major label.
Houston was later a part of the Sweet Inspirations — with Doris Troy and Dee Dee Warrick — a vocal group known for singing backup for artists like Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Elvis Presley, Van Morrison and Dionne Warwick. Both Warwicks were Houston’s nieces.
In 1967, the group sang on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” while Houston sang on Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way.”
Houston went on to become an in-demand session singer, collaborating with the likes of Chaka Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Luther Vandross, Beyoncé, Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston on hundreds of songs over several decades.
Houston won the best traditional soul gospel album Grammy in 1997 for “Face to Face in 1997 and “He Leadeth Me” the next year. They marked the only Grammy nominations she received during her career.
She also wrote three books: “He Leadeth Me,” “How Sweet The Sound: My Life with God and Gospel” and “Remembering Whitney: A Mother’s Story of Life, Loss and The Night The Music Stopped.”
Whitney Houston died in 2012 at the age of 48 after accidentally drowning in a hotel bathtub.
“I’m angry she died alone, in those conditions,” she wrote in the memoir. “I’m still mad about that.”
“Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness, 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.”
