According to her daughter-in-law Pat Houston, Houston, a two-time Grammy Award winner, passed away in her New Jersey home while receiving hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease.
“We feel anguish and pain in our hearts. We lost our family’s matriarch,” she remarked, mentioning her mother-in-law as a “powerful and towering presence” in the family’s history.
Houston had a prosperous singing career spanning several decades, performing with such icons as Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley.
Houston was the youngest of eight children when she was born in New Jersey in 1933. She formed a gospel group when she was young, and she started singing.
She founded the R&B group Sweet Inspirations in the 1960s, providing backing vocals for well-known artists including Otis Redding, Dusty Springfield, and Dionne Warwick. They also performed on Van Morrison’s famous song Brown Eyed Girl.
Following her success with the Sweet Inspirations, Houston started a solo career, performing with such musicians as Paul Simon, Beyoncé, Jimi Hendrix, Chaka Khan, and her late daughter Whitney Houston, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 48.
Houston was the recipient of two Grammy Awards: one in 1997 for her classic soul gospel album Face to Face, and another in 1998 for her album He Leadeth Me.
