Pop superstar Whitney Houston dies

Dated February 12, 2011 filed photo shows US singer Whitney Houston performing onstage during the 2011 Pre-Grammy Gala & Salute to Industry Icons, with Clive Davis Honoring David Geffen at the Beverly Hilton, Beverly Hill. Houston, who dominated the US music scene in the 1980s and '90s, was found dead Saturday in a Beverly Hills hotel. She was 48. AFP FILE PHOTO

LOS ANGELES—Whitney Houston, the multimillion-selling singer who emerged in the 1980s as one of her generation’s greatest R&B voices, only to deteriorate through years of cocaine use and an abusive marriage, died on Saturday in Los Angeles.

Houston’s death at Beverly Hilton Hotel at age 48 came on the eve of music’s biggest night—the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and where she will be remembered on Sunday in a tribute by Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, organizers said.

She died at the same hotel where her mentor, record mogul Clive Davis, was holding an annual pre-event party at which she was scheduled to perform.

A dramatic scene unfolded at the Hilton as music celebrities arriving for the party expressed shock at her death, while reporters swarmed the hotel and fans gathered to pay their respects, drawn by the news of this latest high-profile pop star dying in Los Angeles.

Houston was declared dead in her room at the hotel about 4 p.m. after paramedics from the Beverly Hills Fire Department spent close to 30 minutes trying to revive her, the authorities said. There was no immediate word on the cause of her death.

Police said they received an emergency call from hotel security about Houston at 3:43 p.m. on Saturday. Paramedics who were already at the hotel because of a Grammy party were not able to resuscitate her.

Death at party-time

Partygoers and celebrities continued to arrive for Davis’ party while fans stood behind a rope trying to take pictures. Dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos, people stepped out of limousines at the curbside and streamed into the party.

From the first, Houston had the talent, looks and pedigree of a pop superstar. She was the daughter of Cissy Houston, a gospel and pop singer who had backed up Aretha Franklin, and the cousin of Dionne Warwick. (Franklin is Houston’s godmother.)

Houston’s range spanned five octaves, and her voice was plush, vibrant and often spectacular. She could pour on the exuberant flourishes of gospel or peal a simple pop chorus; she could sing sweetly or unleash a sultry rasp.

Dressed in everything from formal gowns to T-shirts, she cultivated the image of a fun-loving but ardent good girl, the voice behind songs as perky as “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” and as torchy as what became her signature song, a version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”

Marijuana, cocaine

But by the mid-1990s, even as she was moving into acting with films like “The Bodyguard” and “The Preacher’s Wife,” she became what she described, in a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, as a “heavy” user of marijuana and cocaine.

By the 2000s she was struggling; her voice grew smaller, scratchier and less secure, and her performances grew erratic.

All of Houston’s studio albums were million-sellers, and two have sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone: her 1985 debut album and the 1992 soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which contains “I Will Always Love You.”

But her marriage to the singer Bobby Brown—which was, at one point, documented in a Bravo reality television series, “Being Bobby Brown”—grew miserable, and in the 2000s, her singles slipped from the top 10.

Houston became a tabloid subject; the National Enquirer ran a photo of her bathroom showing drug paraphernalia. And each new album—“Just Whitney” in 2002 and “I Look to You” in 2009—became a comeback.

At Central Park in 2009, singing for “Good Morning America,” her voice was frayed, and on the world tour that followed the release of the album “I Look to You,” she was often shaky.

First Grammy

Whitney Houston was born on Aug. 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey. She sang in church, and as a teenager in the 1970s and early 1980s, she worked as a backup studio singer and featured vocalist with acts including Chaka Khan, the Neville Brothers and Bill Laswell’s Material.

Davis signed her after hearing her perform in a New York City nightclub and spent two years supervising production of the album “Whitney Houston,” which was released in 1985. It placed her remarkable voice in polished, catchy songs that straddled pop and R&B, and it included three No. 1 singles: “Saving All My Love for You,” “How Will I Know” and “The Greatest Love of All.”

Because Houston had been credited on previous recordings, including a 1984 duet with Teddy Pendergrass, she was ruled ineligible for the best new artist category of the Grammy Awards; the eligibility criteria have since been changed.

But “Saving All My Love for You” won her first Grammy award, for best female pop vocal performance, an award she would win twice more.

Her popularity soared for the next decade.

First by a woman

Her second album, “Whitney,” in 1987, became the first album by a woman to enter the Billboard charts at No. 1, and it included four No. 1 singles. She shifted her pop slightly toward R&B on her third album, “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” in 1990, which had three more No. 1 singles.

For much of the 1990s, she turned to acting, bolstered by her music. She played a pop diva in “The Bodyguard,” and its soundtrack album went on to sell 17 million copies in the United States.

It won the Grammy for album of the year, and “I Will Always Love You” won record of the year (for a single). After making the films “Waiting To Exhale” in 1995 and “The Preacher’s Wife” in 1996—which gave her the occasion to make a gospel album—Houston resumed her pop career with “My Love Is Your Love” in 1998.

Turbulent marriage

Houston married Brown in 1992, and in 1993 they had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who survives her. Houston’s 2009 interview with Winfrey portrayed it as a passionate and then turbulent marriage, marred by drug use and by his professional jealousy, psychological abuse and physical confrontations. They divorced in 2007.

Her albums in the 2000s advanced a new persona for Houston: defensive and scrappy, lashing out at the media and insisting on her loyalty to her man. Her most recent studio album, “I Look to You,” appeared in 2009, and it, too, reached No. 1.

That album included a hard-headed breakup song, “Salute,” and a hymnlike anthem, “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.” Houston sang, “I crashed down and I tumbled, but I did not crumble / I got through all the pain,” in a voice that showed scars.

Besides her daughter, now 18, Houston is survived by her mother.

Beverly Hills police Lt. Mark Rosen said Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. “There were no obvious signs of any criminal intent,” Rosen said. Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said the cause of death was unknown.

Favorite night

Her longtime mentor 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 on 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.

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

Born to be great

She seemed to be born into greatness.

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 the mogul Davis first heard Houston perform. With reports from New York Times News Service and Reuters

Originally posted at 09:37 am | Sunday, Feb 12, 2012