The Memoir Of Ms. Butterfly

I can’t talk about the woman who is known as the voice of the world. So instead, we must speak about Cissy Houston. Born Emily Drinkard in Newark, New Jersey. To Nicholas “Nitch” Drinkard (1895-1952) and Delia Mae Drinkard (née McCaskill) (1901-1941), she was the eighth and final child; older siblings were brothers William (1918–2003), Hansom (1924–deceased), Nicky (1929–1992), and Larry (1931–2012); and sisters Lee (1920–2005), Marie (1922–2007), and Anne (1927–2003). Houston’s father, Nicholas Drinkard, was born to Susan Bell (called Delia) Drinkard (née Fuller), of Dutch and African-American descent. His father, John Drinkard, Jr., was of Native American descent. The Drinkards had owned a substantial amount of farmland in Blakely, Georgia when it was unusual for black people to have large landholdings. However, the asset was gradually depleted as they sold small portions of land over time to resolve the continued legal troubles of a close relative.

After Houston’s three oldest siblings were born, the family relocated to New Jersey during the Great Migration. Her parents emphasized the children getting educated and being involved in the church. Her father encouraged Houston and her siblings to sing. In 1938, five-year-old Cissy’s mother, Delia, suffered a stroke and died of a cerebral hemorrhage three years later. Houston’s father died of stomach cancer in March 1952 when Houston was 18. Cissy went to live with her older sister Lee and her husband, Mancel Warrick. The Warrick’s had three children: a son, Mancel Warrick Jr., and two daughters, Marie Dionne Warrick and Delia Juanita (Dee Dee) Warrick. Soprano Leontyne Price is a Drinkard cousin. Houston attended South Side High School.

Houston’s singing career began in 1938 when she joined her sister Anne and brothers Larry and Nicky in the Drinkard Four gospel singing group. Lee (who would later become the mother of singers Marie Dionne Warrick and Delia Juanita (Dee Dee) Warrick, later joined the group along with Anne Drinkard Moss and Marie Drinkard Epps, and the group was renamed The Drinkard Singers. While performing on Drinkard Singers, Cissy Houston made her television debut on T.V. Gospel Time. Houston and the Drinkard Singers regularly performed at New Hope Baptist Church and later recorded a live album for RCA called A Joyful Noise, becoming one of the first gospel acts to release a gospel album on a major label. The Drinkard Singers also earned success performing at Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival.

Sweet Inspirations

In 1963, then about to give birth to daughter Whitney Houston, she formed the Sweet Inspirations with Doris Troy and niece Dee Dee Warwick. Later, under contract to Atlantic Records, Sylvia Shemwell, Estelle Brown, and Myrna Smith formed the line-up. During the mid-1960s, Sweet Inspirations provided backup vocals for artists, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Lou Rawls, The Drifters, Dusty Springfield, and Houston’s niece Dionne Warwick. They appeared in Van Morrison’s single “Brown Eyed Girl. In addition, Houston performed the operatic soprano[failed verification] descant on the Aretha Franklin hit “Ain’t No Way.” In 1967, The Sweet Inspirations sang background vocals for The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the track “Burning of the Midnight Lamp.

In 1969, they were hired to sing backing vocals for American singer Elvis Presley in Las Vegas on his return to live performances during July and August 1969. Presley often introduced them at shows by saying, “They really live up to their name, ladies & gentlemen: The Sweet Inspirations! Many of these performances can be heard on the All Shook Up and Live In Las Vegas live records. Performing with Elvis Presley was Houston’s final gig with The Sweet Inspirations. As her children grew more prominent, she decided to stop touring and focus on her career as a recording artist.

Solo career

As Cecily Blair, she cut her first secular solo record, “This Is My Vow,” on M’n’M Records in 1963, following this up in 1966 with “Bring Him Back” b/w “World Of Broken Hearts” on Congress. Her last solo single before recording with The Sweet Inspirations was “Don’t Come Running To Me” b/w “One Broken Heart For Sale,” released on Kapp Records in 1967. On these early singles, her name is spelled as Sissie Houston. In 1969, Houston signed a recording contract with Commonwealth United Records and recorded her solo debut L.P. Presenting Cissy Houston, which was released in 1970. It contained several well-received singles, including covers of “I’ll Be There” and “Be My Baby. Both of which made the R&B charts.

Following the release of her debut album, Houston’s contract was sold to Janus Records in 1970. She recorded another album and several more singles in the early 1970s, which included the original recording of Jim Weatherly’s “Midnight Train to Georgia” in 1972, later a number-one hit for Gladys Knight & The Pips. She continued to record with Janus Records until 1975. In 1977, Houston was signed by Private Stock Records, working with arranger/producer Michael Zager on three albums. The second included her big disco hit “Think It Over. which climbed to No. 32 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1979. She represented the USA at the World Popular Song Festival in 1979 with a track called “You’re the Fire. Landing second place and winning the “Most Outstanding Performance Award.” This also appeared on her 1980 disco-flavored album. Step Aside for a Lady, again produced by Zager, was released on Columbia Records (on EMI in the United Kingdom).

Houston’s versatile cross-genre singing style has kept her in high demand as a session musician with some of the world’s most successful recording artists. Houston, along with Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, sang the background vocals on the original recording of Time Is On My Side by Kai Winding, released by Verve Records in October 1963. She was one of the backup singers on the Paul Simon song “Mother and Child Reunion” (1972). Houston sang backup on Bette Midler’s 1972 debut album, The Divine Miss M. In 1974, Houston sang backup on Linda Ronstadt’s multi-Platinum Heart Like A Wheel, a seminal album that topped Billboard′s Pop and Country Album Charts in early 1975. In 1971, Houston was featured on three tracks of Burt Bacharach’s self-titled solo album: “Mexican Divorce,” “All Kinds of People,” and “One Less Bell to Answer.” During 1975 and 1976, she worked with jazz flutist Herbie Mann on three Atlantic albums, Discothèque, Waterbed, and Surprises, featuring on three tracks, “Violet Don’t Be Blue,” JJ Cale’s “Cajun Moon” and “Easter Rising.” In addition to her work as choirmaster at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, NJ, Cissy frequently performed at clubs in NYC, including Mikell’s, Sweetwaters, Seventh Avenue South, and Fat Tuesday from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Whitney Houston, her daughter, and backup singer, increasingly sang solos with Cissy’s band. They would collaborate on “Ain’t No Way” (originally a Cissy Houston and Aretha Franklin vehicle), on which Cissy sang herself and Whitney sang “Aretha.

Born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey, Houston almost seemed destined to become a singer from birth. Her mother and cousin were legendary figures in American gospel, soul, and pop music. Cissy Houston was the choir minister at New Hope Baptist Church, and it was there that a young Houston got her start. Even as a child, Houston was able to wow audiences; she later told Diane Sawyer that a rapturous response from the congregation. At New Hope had a powerful effect on her: “I think I knew then that [my singing ability] was an infectious thing that God had given me.

By the time she turned 15, Houston often performed with her mother and tried to get a record deal of her own. Around the same time, she was discovered by a photographer who was awed by her natural beauty. She soon became an extremely sought-after teen model, one of the first African American women to appear on the cover of Seventeen magazine. But music remained her true love.

When she was 19, Houston was discovered in a nightclub by Arista Records’ Clive Davis, who signed her immediately and took the helm of her career as she navigated from gospel to pop stardom. In 1983, Houston made her debut on national television, appearing on The Merv Griffin Show to sing “Home” from the musical The Wiz. She and Davis spent the next two years working on her debut album, finding the best producers and songwriters available to showcase her incredible vocal talent.

In 1985, the artist released her debut album, Whitney Houston, and almost immediately became a smash pop sensation. Over the next year, her hit singles “Saving All My Love for You” and “How Will I Know” helped the album reach the top of the charts, staying for 14 non-consecutive weeks. In addition, Houston won a Grammy in 1986 for “Saving All My Love for You”; her cousin Dionne Warwick presented the award to the singer. 

Houston followed the monumental success of her first album with a second release, Whitney, in 1987. That record, too, went platinum many times over and won a Grammy for the single “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” with a successful world tour following. During this time, the singer also appeared at a concert for Nelson Mandela’s birthday and founded the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children. This nonprofit organization fund projects to help needy children worldwide.

By 1992, Houston was on top of the world, but her life was about to get very complicated quickly. That year she married the R&B singer Bobby Brown, formerly of New Edition, after a three-year engagement. At first, the marriage was passionate and loving, but things turned sour as the decade progressed. Both Brown and Houston battled substance abuse and increasingly erratic behavior, with Houston later alluding to emotional abuse from Brown and domestic violence.

Despite these growing personal troubles, Houston continued to progress in her career, crossing over successfully into acting in 1992 by starring opposite Kevin Costner in the wildly popular movie The Bodyguard. With this project, she set the trend for her films to follow: For each movie, she also released hit singles, creating sensational record sales for the soundtracks. Her smash single from The Bodyguard, a cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” from 1974, proved to be Houston’s biggest hit, spending a record-breaking 14 weeks atop the U.S. charts. In addition, the soundtrack album went on to win Houston three Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year. Later in the 1990s, Houston starred in Waiting to Exhale and The Preacher’s Wife, accompanied by hit soundtracks.

In 1998, Houston released My Love Is Your Love, her first non-soundtrack studio album in many years. It earned her another Grammy for the single “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay,” The album was not as successful as her previous full-length releases. However, her collaboration with Mariah Carey in the animated film The Prince of Egypt produced a hit single, “When You Believe,” which won an Academy Award. 

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston’s increasingly rocky marriage struggles with drugs and health problems threatened to derail her career. Several concert cancellations and a notorious T.V. interview with Sawyer in 2002, in which Houston appeared far too thin and in poor health, led many to speculate that she was on the verge of a breakdown.

In 2004, when production began on the T.V. reality series Being Bobby Brown, Houston received substantial airtime. Unfortunately, the show aired during the worst years of the couple’s crumbling marriage; drug use, lifestyle excess, and lousy behavior were all caught on tape, and Houston’s reputation sunk to new lows. Houston tried to ignore the controversy, charging ahead with her music by releasing Just Whitney… to combat her detractors, but it did not match the success of her earlier works. Nevertheless, despite her troubled relationship, Houston was still celebrated as a singer, being named the most-awarded female artist of all time by Guinness World Records in 2006.

Over the next few years, Houston attempted to repair her marriage and break her drug habit, but Cissy had to step in after several relapses. Houston explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2009: “[My mother] walks in with the sheriff, and she says: ‘I have a court injunction here. You do it my way, or we’re not going to do this at all. You’re going to go on T.V., and you’re going to retire. And say you’re going to give this up because it’s not worth it.’” Houston took a break from her career, divorced Brown in 2007, and won sole custody of Bobbi Kristina.

After almost a decade of struggling with her personal life, Houston seemed to be pulling herself together. She released a new album, I Look To You, in 2009. “The songs themselves will speak to you, and you’ll understand where I am and some of the changes I’ve gone through for the better,” Houston told Entertainment Tonight. The recording received a warm welcome from music fans, making it to the top of the album charts. However, her live shows garnered mixed reviews, with some complaining about the quality of her voice.

In early 2012, Houston was rumored to be experiencing financial trouble, but she denied this claim. Indeed, the artist seemed poised for a career upswing: Houston worked on the musical film Sparkle with Jordin Sparks, a remake of the 1976 movie about an all-girl musical group. In addition, similar to The Supremes, they reportedly had been approached to join the singing competition series The X Factor as a judge. But, unfortunately, Houston needed to live longer to see the latest comeback reach fruition.

Houston died at the age of 48 on February 11, 2012, in Los Angeles at a Beverly Hilton hotel where a Grammy party was being held by Davis. Houston had been seen out the days before her death, including at one of the pre-Grammy parties. According to a report released by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office on March 22, 2012, the official cause of her death was an accidental drowning. However, the effects of heart disease and cocaine found in her system were also contributing factors.

With her passing, the music world lost one of its most legendary stars. Davis once said that Houston “is in the grand tradition of great singers, whether Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, or Gladys Knight.

Daughter Bobbi Kristina dealt with much tumult after the death of her mother. She was hospitalized immediately after the passing of Houston due to emotional trauma but later spoke with Winfrey about returning to her mother’s home and feeling her mother’s presence. Houston left everything to her daughter, but eventually, the singer’s sister-in-law Pat Houston became the estate executor.

Bobbi Kristina had public conflicts with her grandmother, Cissy, over publishing the Houston biography Remembering Whitney. In early 2014, she was reported to have been married to Nick Gordon, who had been taken in by Houston during his childhood and raised with Bobbi Kristina, yet later reports stated that they weren’t legally wed. In another confrontation, she made disparaging comments via Twitter about Angela Bassett after the actress/director opted to cast a trained actress in the lead role of a Houston biopic instead of Bobbi Kristina.

On January 31, 2015, nearly three years before her mother’s death, Bobbi Kristina was discovered face down in a bathtub in her Roswell, Georgia, home by associate Max Lomas. After being admitted to North Fulton Hospital, she was eventually taken to Emory University Hospital and placed into a medically-induced coma.

Her father and grandmother visited her bedside amid calls for public support and prayer, with a candlelight vigil held on February 10 in suburban Atlanta. Bobbi Kristina Brown died on July 26, 2015, at Peachtree Christian Hospice in Duluth, Georgia. She was 22 years old.

Backed by the Houston estate, the documentary Whitney was released in July 2018, with Houston’s sister-in-law, Pat, serving as executive producer. “Everyone that has a life has a story. It’s her story, played out in the documentary,” Pat Houston told Good Morning America a few weeks before the film’s release. “She narrated a lot of it herself. It’s her life, her story as the family would see it, and the friends who dealt with it daily. The documentary premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The doc reveals that her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, sister of Dionne Warwick, allegedly sexually abused the singer. Houston’s brother told filmmakers he was beaten by Dee Dee and believed his sister was too. The documentary also provided insight into Houston’s relationship with drugs — her brother Michael admitted that he gave her marijuana and cocaine as a gift for her 16th birthday — and her kinship with fellow pop superstar Michael Jackson.

The following year brought more revelations about the singer’s private life with the publication of A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston by Robyn Crawford. A longtime friend and assistant, Crawford confirmed that the two also had a romantic relationship before Houston became a global superstar.

Singer Whitney Houston who recently passed away was buried wearing her purple dress, gold slippers, and $500,000 worth of jewelry! The picture of Whitney in her coffin, published by The National Enquirer, has sparked outrage. A memorial service was held for the singer on February 18, a private affair closed to fans. The gold-lined casket cost more than $15,000, and Whitney lay in it in repose, wearing a diamond brooch and matching earrings. Friends and family who are afraid of grave robbers have deputed round-the-clock guards at the burial plot in fairview cemetery in New Jersey, which remains closed to fans and the general public.

Ms. Butterfly Genesis