Cissy Houston, the two-time Grammy-awarded singer who handed down her pipes to her daughter, the late Whitney Houston, died Monday morning while under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 91.
In a statement to The Associated Press, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston revealed that the time-honored singer passed away at home in New Jersey, not far from Fairview Cemetery & Arboretum in Westfield, where her famous daughter is buried.
“Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness. We lost the matriarch of our family,” Pat Houston wrote. “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.”
Fostering her daughter's talent by bringing her on as a background singer in her band and performing together in cabaret clubs across New York City, Whitney learned valuable lessons on performing directly from the source and never failed to give her mom partial credit for her success, although the relationship between mother and daughter was often described as "complicated."
"My mother said, 'You watch the best. If you wanna be the best, you gotta watch them. You have to watch what they do. And then incorporate it into your own,'" Whitney said in a famous clip.
Long before Cissy Houston was mother to Whitney, she performed in the Sweet Inspirations with Doris Troy and her niece Dee Dee Warrick and also performed alongside Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin. In 1997 and 1998 she won back-to-back Grammys for her albums “Face to Face” and “He Leadeth Me.”
In a fitting tribute to a family that has suffered so much loss in past years, a fan posted a photo to X of the three departed Houston women; Cissy, Whitney and Whitney's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown; with the caption, "Together again."
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