Singer Cissy Houston performs on stage at the 2012 BET Awards in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Buckner/Getty Images for BET

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Michael Buckner/Getty Images for BET

Singer Cissy Houston performs on stage at the 2012 BET Awards in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Buckner/Getty Images for BET

Cissy Houston, a singer whose career began in her childhood and spanned generations and genres from gospel to pop, has died. As a child, Houston performed with her siblings, and later sang background vocals for Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison and more. She was also a renowned solo gospel artist and the mother of one of the biggest pop and R&B stars in the world, Whitney Houston. That was her 91 years old.

Houston was born Emily Drinkard in Newark, NJ, in 1933 into a musically gifted family. As a child, she was expected to perform at local churches with her siblings.

“I was five years old and they had to put me on a stool to see me,” she told WHYY’s Fresh air in 1998. “Of course, when I was five years old, I wanted to play with everyone and that was difficult for me. There was no doubt. I had no choice.”

Her family group, The Drinkard Singers, became one of the first groups to release a gospel album on a major record label. A cheerful sound was released in 1959 by RCA Records.

In the 1960s, Houston decided she wanted to sing secular music and formed the group The Sweet Inspirations. Under Houston’s leadership, it earned a reputation as one of the best background groups in the industry. They appeared on hundreds of songs and helped shape classics ranging from Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of A Preacher Man.”

The group’s first album, titled The sweet inspirations recorded in 1967, peaked at number 12 Billboard‘s Hot Soul Albums and the crossover hit single “Sweet Inspiration” reached the top 20 of the Hot 100 singles chart.

Along with Sylvia Shemwell, Myrna Smith and Estelle Brown, Houston sang backup for Jimi Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, The Drifters, Wilson Pickett and Houston’s niece Dionne Warwick, who was once part of the group with her sister Dee Dee Warwick, before leaving were both part of the group. a solo artist.

An innovative musician, Houston used four background voices instead of the standard three and doubled her upper part to enrich the sound. She explained her process Fresh air with the song “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin as an example.

“‘Natural Woman’ was like… you’re trying to improve on what she’s done. That’s the essence of doing background,” Houston said. “A lot of times backgrounds make songs and really sell them.”

Still, after spending a lot of time in the background, Houston was ready for the spotlight. “I became an artist in my own right and then I left The Sweet Inspirations and became a single artist,” Houston said.

She was also torn between professional demands and being a mother. Long hours and touring around the country kept her from seeing her children as much as she wanted. She had two sons, Gary Garland and Michael, and a daughter, Whitney, who would become one of the biggest pop stars of all time.

Cissy and Whitney Houston were famously close. Their relationship was also one of mentor and protégé.

“She’s my mom. She’s my friend. She’s my teacher,” Whitney Houston explained Entertainment tonight in 1987. “She’s like a little gas station. When you need some strength, you just go to Mom, and she fills you up.”

Whitney died when she was just 48, after a years-long battle with addiction and a notoriously troubled marriage. In 2013 Cissy Houston wrote a book, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped. The memoir upset her granddaughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, who would also later die tragically at the age of 22. In a since-deleted tweet, Brown expressed her anger. “I feel it is a disrespect to my mother and I, as her daughter, will not tolerate it,” she wrote.

The memoir’s treatment of rumors about Whitney Houston’s lesbian relationship also led to a memorable moment with Oprah Winfrey.

“Would it have bothered you if your daughter, Whitney, was gay?” Winfrey asked Cissy Houston in a 2013 interview on OWN’s Next chapter.

“Absolutely,” Houston replied.

“You wouldn’t have liked that at all, would you?” Oprah pressed.

“Not at all,” Houston said.

Houston stayed true to her roots in other ways. For more than fifty years, despite triumphs and tragedies, Cissy Houston led the Youth Inspiration Choir at her hometown Baptist church in Newark.