Whitney Houston: a majestic voice ravaged by drugs

Her longtime mentor Clive Davis went ahead with his annual concert at the same
hotel where her body was found. He dedicated the evening to her and asked
for a moment of silence as a photo of the singer, hands wide open, looking
to the sky, appeared on the screen.

Houston was supposed to appear at the gala, and Davis had told The Associated
Press that she would perhaps perform: “It’s her favorite night of the year
… (so) who knows by the end of the evening,” he had said.

Houston had been at rehearsals for the show Thursday, coaching singers Brandy
and Monica, according to a person who was at the event but was not
authorized to speak publicly about it. The person said Houston looked
disheveled, was sweating profusely and liquor and cigarettes could be
smelled on her breath.

Two days ago, she performed at a pre-Grammy party with singer Kelly Price.
Singer Kenny Lattimore hosted the event, and said Houston sang the gospel
classic “Jesus Loves Me” with Price, her voice registering softly, not with
the same power it had at its height.

Lattimore said Houston was gregarious and was in a good mood, surrounded by
friends and family, including daughter Bobbi Kristina.

“She just seemed like she was having a great night that night,” said
Lattimore, who said he was in shock over her death.

Aretha Franklin, her godmother, also said she was stunned.

“I just can’t talk about it now,” Franklin said in a short statement. “It’s so
stunning and unbelievable. I couldn’t believe what I was reading coming
across the TV screen.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would call for a national prayer Sunday morning
during a service at Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

“The morning of the Grammys, the world should pause and pray for the memory of
a gifted songbird,” Sharpton said in a statement.

In a statement, Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said Houston
“was one of the world’s greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a
robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades.”

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the
mid-1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling
artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful and peerless vocals
rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like
“The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

She had the perfect voice and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex
appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to
Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that
many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the
toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her
once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public
appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her
once-pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as
she had during her prime.

“The biggest devil is me. I’m either my best friend or my worst enemy,”
Houston told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with
then-husband Brown by her side.

It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was one of the top-selling artists in
pop music history, with more than 55 million records sold in the United
States alone.

She seemed to be born into greatness. In addition to being Franklin’s
goddaughter, she was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and the
cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang
backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling.
It was around that time that music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston
perform.

“The time that I first saw her singing in her mother’s act in a club … it
was such a stunning impact,” Davis told “Good Morning America.”

“To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really
sent the proverbial tingles up my spine,” he added.

Before long, the rest of the country would feel it, too. Houston made her
album debut in 1985 with “Whitney Houston,” which sold millions and spawned
hit after hit. “Saving All My Love for You” brought her her first Grammy,
for best female pop vocal. “How Will I Know,” “You Give Good Love” and “The
Greatest Love of All” also became hit singles.

Another multiplatinum album, “Whitney,” came out in 1987 and included hits
like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

The New York Times wrote that Houston “possesses one of her generation’s most
powerful gospel-trained voices, but she eschews many of the churchier
mannerisms of her forerunners. She uses ornamental gospel phrasing only
sparingly, and instead of projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability,
communicates cool self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to
majestic, sustained peaks of intensity.”

Her decision not to follow the more soulful inflections of singers like
Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her as playing down her black roots
to go pop and reach white audiences. The criticism would become a constant
refrain through much of her career. She was even booed during the “Soul
Train Awards” in 1989.

“Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?” she told Katie Couric in 1996.
“You’re not black enough for them. I don’t know. You’re not RB enough.
You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”

Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New Edition member and soul crooner Bobby
Brown as an attempt to refute those critics. It seemed to be an odd union;
she was seen as pop’s pure princess while he had a bad-boy image and already
had children of his own. (The couple only had one daughter, Bobbi Kristina,
born in 1993.) Over the years, he would be arrested several times, on
charges ranging from DUI to failure to pay child support.

But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may
have believed.

“When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have
different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place,”
she told Rolling Stone in 1993. “You see somebody, and you deal with their
image, that’s their image. It’s part of them, it’s not the whole picture. I
am not always in a sequined gown. I am nobody’s angel. I can get down and
dirty. I can get raunchy.”

Brown was getting ready to perform at a New Edition reunion tour in Southaven,
Mississippi, as news spread about Houston’s death. The group went ahead with
its performance, though Brown appeared overcome with emotion when his voice
cracked at the beginning of a ballad and he left the stage.

Before his departure, he told the sell-out crowd: “First of all, I want to
tell you that I love you all. Second, I would like to say, I love you
Whitney. The hardest thing for me to do is to come on this stage.”

Brown said he decided to perform because fans had shown their loyalty to the
group for more than 25 years. During an intermission, one of Houston’s early
hits, “You Give Good Love,” played over the speakers. Fans stood up and
began singing along.

It would take several years for the public to see the “down and dirty” side of
Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the
Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again
reaffirmed her as America’s sweetheart.

In 1992, she became a star in the acting world with “The Bodyguard.” Despite
mixed reviews, the story of a singer (Houston) guarded by a former Secret
Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.

It also gave her perhaps her most memorable hit: a searing, stunning rendition
of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which sat atop the charts for
weeks. It was Grammy’s record of the year and best female pop vocal, and the
“Bodyguard” soundtrack was named album of the year.

She returned to the big screen in 1995-96 with “Waiting to Exhale” and “The
Preacher’s Wife.” Both spawned soundtrack albums, and another hit studio
album, “My Love Is Your Love,” in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female
RB vocal for the cut “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.”

But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an
interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2009, she said by the time “The Preacher’s
Wife” was released, “(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. … I would do my
work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day.
… I wasn’t happy by that point in time. I was losing myself.”

In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a
charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

Houston would go to rehab twice before she would declare herself drug-free to
Winfrey in 2009. But in the interim, there were missed concert dates, a stop
at an airport due to drugs, and public meltdowns.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that
rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery
appearance on Brown’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown,” was an example of
her sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared “crack is whack,”
was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.

Houston staged what seemed to be a successful comeback with the 2009 album “I
Look To You.” The album debuted on the top of the charts, and would
eventually go platinum.

Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote the album on “Good Morning
America” went awry as Houston’s voice sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed
an interview with Winfrey for straining her voice.

A world tour launched overseas, however, only confirmed suspicions that
Houston had lost her treasured gift, as she failed to hit notes and left
many fans unimpressed; some walked out. Canceled concert dates raised
speculation that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those
claims and said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.

Houston was to make her return to film in the remake of the classic movie
“Sparkle.” Filming on the movie, which stars former “American Idol” winner
Jordin Sparks, recently wrapped.

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