Singer Cissy Houston performs onstage during the 2012 BET Awards in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Buckner/Getty Images For BET

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Michael Buckner/Getty Images For BET

Singer Cissy Houston performs onstage during the 2012 BET Awards in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Buckner/Getty Images For BET

Cissy Houston, a singer whose career began in childhood and spanned generations and genres from gospel to pop, has died. As a child, Houston performed with her siblings, and she later sang backing vocals with Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison and more. She was also a renowned solo gospel artist and the mother of one of the biggest pop and R&B stars in the world, Whitney Houston. She was 91 years old.

Houston was born in 1933, as Emily Drinkard, in Newark, N.J., to a musically gifted family. As a child, she was expected to perform at local churches with her brothers and sisters.

“I was 5 years old and they had to put me on a stool in order to see me,” she told WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1998. “Of course, at 5 years old, I wanted to be out playing with everyone else and it was difficult for me. There was no question. I didn’t have a choice.”

Her family group, The Drinkard Singers, became one of the first groups to release a gospel album on a major record label. A Joyful Noise was released in 1959 by RCA Records.

In the 1960s, Houston decided she wanted to sing secular music and formed the group The Sweet Inspirations. Under Houston’s leadership, it earned a reputation as one of the best background groups in the business, appearing on hundreds of songs and helping to shape classics ranging from Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of A Preacher Man.”

The group’s first album, the self-titled The Sweet Inspirations recorded in 1967, peaked at No. 12 on Billboard‘s Hot Soul Albums, and its crossover hit single “Sweet Inspiration” reached the top 20 of the Hot 100 singles chart.

Along with Sylvia Shemwell, Myrna Smith and Estelle Brown, Houston sang backup for Jimi Hendrix, Simon and Garfunkel, The Drifters, Wilson Pickett and Houston’s niece Dionne Warwick, who was once part of the group with her sister Dee Dee Warwick, before each became a solo artist.

An innovative musician, Houston used four background voices rather than the standard three and doubled her top part to enrich the sound. She explained her process to Fresh Air using the song “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” by Aretha Franklin, as an example.

“‘Natural Woman’ was like … you try to enhance what she’s done. That’s the gist of doing background,” Houston said. “A lot of times, backgrounds make songs and really sell them.”

Still, after spending a lot of time in the background, Houston was ready for the spotlight. “I was becoming an artist in my own right and that’s when I left The Sweet Inspirations and became a single artist,” Houston said.

She was also torn between professional demands and being a mom. Long hours and touring across the country kept her from seeing her children as much as she desired. She had two sons, Gary Garland and Michael, and a daughter, Whitney, who would go on to be one of the biggest pop stars of all time.

Cissy and Whitney Houston were famously close. Their relationship was also one of mentor and protégé.

“She’s my mom. She’s my friend. She’s my teacher,” Whitney Houston explained on Entertainment Tonight in 1987. “She’s like a little gas station. When you need some strength, you just go to Mom, and she fills you.”

Whitney died when she was only 48, after years of battling addiction and a notoriously troubled marriage. In 2013, Cissy Houston wrote a book, Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped. The memoir upset her granddaughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, who would later also die tragically at the age of 22. In a since-deleted tweet, Brown expressed her anger. “I find it 2b disrespect2mymother & me being her daughter won’t tolerate it,” she wrote.

The memoir’s treatment of rumors about Whitney Houston’s closeted lesbian relationship also led to a memorable moment with Oprah Winfrey.

“Would it have bothered you if your daughter, Whitney, was gay?” Winfrey asked Cissy Houston in a 2013 interview on OWN’s Next Chapter.

“Absolutely,” Houston replied.

“You wouldn’t have liked that at all?” Oprah pressed.

“Not at all,” said Houston.

Houston stayed true to her roots in other ways. For more than 50 years, through triumphs and tragedies, Cissy Houston led the Youth Inspiration Choir at her hometown Baptist church in Newark.

It’s October, which means it’s almost time to pull out your costumes and candy for Halloween festivities. At this time of the year, you can be whoever you want — at least for a day. In addition to dressing up, many people may have traditions to accompany the holiday. We want to hear about the activities you look forward to for Halloween. Who knows, maybe someone will be inspired by what you do and add it to their celebrations.

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Howdy! I’m Jaclyn Cosgrove, an outdoors reporter at the L.A. Times. I write about the best trails, bodies of water, campgrounds and more that you should visit in and around Los Angeles County. I’m also the voice behind The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter. I am often out hiking alongside Maggie May, my trusty trail dog, whether it’s for work or fun. As the seasons change, I’d love to meet you out on the trail to determine if fall foliage does in fact exist in L.A.

I’m inviting 30 L.A. Times subscribers to join me on a hike from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Oct. 19. This is the second event in our subscriber-exclusive hiking event series. (We’re already busy planning fun outdoors events for 2025.)

We will start from the lower parking lot of the Gabrielino Trail and take an easy three-mile stroll along the Arroyo Seco. This is one of my favorite hikes in all of Angeles National Forest, as it includes a river, a shaded path and plenty to look at and listen to. Along the way, we’ll be on the lookout for native trees, like bigleaf maples and black walnut trees, that change colors with the season. (And yes, you’re welcome to take photos for Instagram, iNaturalist or both!)

The trail starts with a very brief steep incline up a paved road before quickly flattening out. We’ll walk along a paved path parallel to the river, which after about half a mile turns into a dirt trail. We will follow this pleasant path as it heads northwest through the canyon.

I’ll bring Maggie, as this is one of her favorite hikes, too. Your leashed dogs are also welcome to join us. You may want to bring a towel for Fido, as we will likely cross the river at least once.

We will turn around one and a half miles in, but you can hike the additional two miles (an additional four miles round trip) to the Brown Mountain Dam waterfall on your own if you’d like to continue (preferably with a downloaded or paper map).

Rather than parking in the small paved lot off Windsor Avenue, you’ll want to continue north on Explorer Road until you reach a large sandy parking lot. Parking is free, and no pass is required.

Please park toward the northern end of the lot. We will meet here, near the short bridge that leads to a back entrance of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (where we won’t be going, but which does host occasional public tours). Please wear good shoes, a hat and sunscreen. We will have water bottles for attendees but you’re also welcome to bring your own. You must be 18 or older and will be required to sign a waiver prior to attending. Grab a spot on eventbrite.com.