c. 1998 Religion News Service

EDGEWATER, N.J. _ When Cissy Houston arrived at a cozy cafe in northern New Jersey’s Bergen County for an interview and lunch recently, she looked prosperous but not flashy.

Dressed in a comfortable pantsuit, she wore a cross pendant with a heart-shaped diamond around her neck. A diamond bracelet encircled one wrist. A ring or two completed the portrait of a Grammy-winning singer whose daughter, Whitney, is one of the most famous women in the world.

To look at the 64-year-old Houston, you don’t see the years she spent in Newark, N.J., as the youngest of eight children singing with her siblings as the Drinkard Singers gospel group. Her mother died after a series of strokes when Houston was 8. Cancer took her father when she was 18.

In her warm smile you might see, instead, a hint of the girl who loved to dance so much that she would sneak into a nightclub and boogie until she got caught. And she always got caught.

“My parents didn’t take any stuff,” Houston said. “My sister, even after my mom died, didn’t take any stuff.”

Any serious music fan knows that Houston strutted her vocal stuff with some of pop music’s biggest names. Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison and the Drifters made records graced by Houston’s harmonies with the Sweet Inspirations. The group also made records on its own and toured with Franklin and Presley. Houston recorded several solo albums, including the 1996 gospel Grammy winner “Face to Face.”

Now, Houston is telling her story in her autobiography, “How Sweet the Sound: My Life With God and Gospel” (Doubleday Books). She hopes the book will let people know that they can live their dreams.

“I want people to know that you don’t have to wallow in anything,” she said. “You can be anything you want to be and be a decent person doing it. You don’t have to conform to other people’s wants and wishes. You have to have a mind of your own.”

If the title leads you to expect a treacly inspirational volume awash in uplift, you’ve underestimated Houston. She’s not the type to wash any of her family’s dirty laundry in public, but she owns up to her doubts and shortcomings with graceful candor.

At one point she writes about not knowing God fully until she started literally counting her blessings one evening in church.

“When things bombard you, you think, `What the heck is going on?’ You kind of waver and wonder if your faith is really strong. I never felt that God wasn’t there. I just hadn’t reached out for him.”

Houston didn’t expect to sing for a living. She liked singing with her siblings and enjoyed performing in the gospel shows they played.

But she also held down a day job at an RCA factory. Even when she started doing session work in New York, she kept her day job. When she realized that what she had been paid for two days’ worth of sessions equaled one week’s pay at RCA, she left the job.

Houston was her family’s chief wage earner. Her now ex-husband John drove a truck some weekends, but he mostly took care of the couple’s three children. By the time the two sons were in college, the Houstons had separated, and Whitney and her mom were living on their own.

“When I look back now, it had to have been God that kept us going,” Houston said. “I sent them (sons Gary and Michael) money every week and kept Whitney in private school. I had a house and a car. All I was doing was working.”

Apparently, little Whitney wanted to grow up and do what her mama did for a living, and her mother didn’t want that.

“I didn’t want her to be in the business at all. I really didn’t,” Houston said. “I know what it can do to you. I’ve seen so many people fall by the wayside with so many different things. It’s frustrating almost to the point of no return.

“You may bring your child up a certain way, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to follow what you showed them. This business can be a dog business. It’s been very good to me, but it’s not without problems. I was worried for her.”

But Whitney has been successful, possibly because she has surrounded herself with her family. Both of her brothers work with her, and her mother runs the Whitney Houston Foundation for Children as president and CEO. The foundation gives an annual Christmas party for children living in shelters in Newark and has made donations to a number of charities.

“We’ve tried to keep it a family business,” Houston said. “Other people in the business have their family and friends involved. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Even with her duties as the foundation head, Houston still has time to be minister of music of New Hope Baptist Church in Newark. She’s been a member there for 40 years and the choir director for close to 25.

In the movie “The Preacher’s Wife,” Houston and her daughter got to switch roles. Whitney played the choir director and her mother had a small role as a soloist.

“She was giving me a fit,” Houston recalled. “I think she liked that. We had a lot of good times on that picture. Sometimes we got carried away with the Lord and the Georgia Mass Choir. It was such a good time.”

Houston doesn’t think of her life as exceptional until someone points out what she’s accomplished.

“It was phenomenal the things I did and went through,” Houston said. “I would come home from work at night from a club or a session. It would be 4 in the morning, and I would wash the makeup off my face. I would lay down and sleep until 6:30 and then go to church at 8. It sustained me and gave me the strength to make it through the week.”

IR END PERRY