Cissy Houston, Grammy winner and mother of Whitney Houston, dies at 91

Cissy Houston, a Grammy-Award-winning vocalist and the parent of Whitney Houston, has died. She was 91.

Houston died Monday morning surrounded by household successful her New Jersey home, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told The Associated Press. She had been nether hospice attraction for Alzheimer’s disease.

The vocalist was calved Emily Drinkard successful Newark connected Sept. 30, 1933. The youngest of 8 children, she got her commencement successful the euphony manufacture astatine an aboriginal age, performing with siblings Anne, Larry and Nicky arsenic The Drinkard Four. The radical aboriginal added much members and was rechristened The Drinkard Singers. In 1957, their medium “A Joyful Noise” was released by RCA Records and became the archetypal gospel grounds enactment retired by a large label.

Houston was aboriginal a portion of the Sweet Inspirations — with Doris Troy and Dee Dee Warrick — a vocal radical known for singing backup for artists similar Otis Redding, Wilson Picket, Elvis Presley, Van Morrison and Dionne Warwick. Both Warwicks were Houston’s nieces.

Cissy Houston and girl Whitney Houston be the 2010 Keep A Child Alive’s Black Ball astatine the Hammerstein Ballroom connected September 30, 2010 successful New York City. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

In 1967, the radical sang connected Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” portion Houston sang connected Aretha Franklin’s “Ain’t No Way.”

Houston went connected to go an in-demand league singer, collaborating with the likes of Chaka Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Luther Vandross, Beyoncé, Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston connected hundreds of songs implicit respective decades.

Houston won the champion accepted psyche gospel medium Grammy successful 1997 for “Face to Face successful 1997 and “He Leadeth Me” the adjacent year. They marked the lone Grammy nominations she received during her career.

Cissy Houston performs during the Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center ribbon-cutting ceremonial astatine Prudential Center successful 2017 successful Newark. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

She besides wrote 3 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 successful 2012 astatine the property of 48 aft accidentally drowning successful a edifice bathtub.

“I’m aggravated she died alone, successful those conditions,” she wrote successful the memoir. “I’m inactive huffy astir that.”

“Our hearts are filled with symptom and sadness, daughter-in-law Pat Houston said successful a statement. “We mislaid the matriarch of our family. Mother Cissy has been a beardown and towering fig successful our lives. A pistillate of heavy religion and conviction, who cared greatly astir family, ministry, and community. Her much than seven-decade vocation successful euphony and amusement volition stay astatine the forefront of our hearts.”