Cissy Houston, legendary singer and mother of Whitney Houston, dies at 91

Cissy Houston, renowned gospel singer and the mother of Whitney Houston, died on Monday morning at the age of 91, her family said in a statement.

Houston, a two-time Grammy Award winning singer, died in her New Jersey home while in hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston said.

“Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness. We lost the matriarch of our family,” she said, adding that her mother-in-law was a “strong and towering figure” in the family’s life.

Houston enjoyed a decades-long successful singing career, where she performed alongside superstars like Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin.

Born in New Jersey in 1933, Houston was the youngest of eight children. She began singing at a young age after she formed a gospel group with her siblings.

In the 1960s, she formed the R&B group the Sweet Inspirations, which sang backup for big names like Otis Redding, Dusty Springfield and Dionne Warwick. They also performed on Van Morrison’s hit song Brown Eyed Girl.

After finding success with the Sweet Inspirations, Houston embarked on a solo career, where she sang with artists including Chaka Khan, Jimi Hendrix, Beyonce, Paul Simon, and her late daughter Whitney Houston, who died in 2012 at age 48.

Houston won a Grammy Award for her traditional soul gospel album Face to Face in 1997, and again the following year for her album He Leadeth Me.

She also wrote three books, including one commemorating her daughter, called Remembering Whitney: A Mother’s Story of Life, Loss and The Night The Music Stopped.

At the age of 80, Houston sang once again with Aretha Franklin during her performance on The Late Show with David Letterman, where they performed a cover of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep.

Her daughter-in-law, Pat, said that Houston’s “more than seven-decade career in music and entertainment will remain at the forefront of our hearts”.

She added that the family is “blessed and grateful that God allowed her to spend so many years with us”.

“May she rest in peace, alongside her daughter, Whitney and granddaughter Bobbi Kristina and other cherished family members.”