Cissy (Drinkard) Houston

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

Cissy (Drinkard) Houston is Notable.

Cissy Houston is an American soul and gospel singer. She won two Grammy awards for solo gospel albums. She was also a part of her family's gospel groups the Drinkard Quartet and the Drinkard Singers, as well as the group Sweet Inspirations which released several of their own albums and did back-up vocals for many star musicians.^[1]

Emily "Cissy" Houston was born on September 30th, 1933 in Newark, New Jersey. She is the daughter of Nicholas Arthur Drinkard and Delia Mae McCaskill. She was the youngest of seven siblings: William Drinkard, Arthur Lee (Drinkard) Warwick, Marie (Drinkard) Epps, Handsome Drinkard, Annie (Drinkard) Moss, Nicholas Drinkard Jr, and Larry Drinkard.^[2] She is the aunt of singers Delia "Dee Dee" Warwick and Dionne Warrick, who are daughters of Cissy's sister Lee. She has written about her own life and her family in her books How Sweet the Sound: My Life with God and Gospel (1998) and Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped, (2013).^[3][4]

Cissy married Freddy Garland in the 1950's. They had one son and Cissy left Freddy two years after their marriage.^[5]

Cissy met John Houston in 1958. He was separated, but still married at the time. They moved in together soon after and had two children by the time John's divorce was finalized and they were able to marry in 1964. Their youngest daughter is singer Whitney Houston.^[6] John filed for divorce in 1991 after several years of separation.^[7]

Cissy's music career began when she and her siblings started singing gospel when she was just five years old. They continued performing together through the 1940's and 1950's . They originally performed as the The Drinkard Quartet, later called the Drinkard Singers. In the 1960's Cissy began doing session work as a background singer and in 1967 she formed the group Sweet Inspirations with lvia Shemwell, Estelle Brown and Myrna Smith. They recorded and performed backup vocals for many noted singers, including Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley, as well as recording their own music. Cissy later had a solo career, winning two Grammy awards for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album for her albums Face to Face and He Leadeth Me. She's also been the director of music at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey for decades.^[8][9]

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia: Cissy Houston
2. ↑ Cissy Houston with Jonathon Singer, How Sweet the Sound: My Life with God and Gospel, (New York: Doubleday, 1998), pages 1, 36-37, 46; image copy, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/howsweetsoundmyl00hous : accessed 28 Feb 2023).
3. ↑ Houston and Singer, How Sweet the Sound: My Life with God and Gospel,.
4. ↑ Cissy Houston with Lisa Dickey, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped, (n.p.: HarperCollins, 2013); image copy, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/rememberingwhitn0000hous_b8z5 : accessed 28 Feb 2023).
5. ↑ Houston with Dickey, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped, page 32.
6. ↑ Houston with Dickey, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped, pages 33ff, 45.
7. ↑ Houston with Dickey, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped, pages143-146.
8. ↑ David Beaudoin, "Houston, Cissy," page 190; Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music (New York: Routledge, 2010), W.K. McNeil, editor; image copy, Google Books, (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Encyclopedia_of_American_Gospel_Music/beGNAQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA190 : accessed 28 Feb 2023).
9. ↑ "Cissy Houston," Grammy Awards, https://www.grammy.com/artists/cissy-houston/13569 : accessed 28 Feb 2023.

See also:

• Wikidata: Item Q465702
• Cissy Houston oral history interview with the National Visionary Leadership Project; summary at https://www.visionaryproject.org/houstoncissy/; video playlist on Youtube : accessed 28 Feb 2023.