Remembering Whitney: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Night the Music Stopped

by Houston, Cissy

  John was still working on getting his divorce, and while he always enjoyed driving the taxi and those big rigs, he also had greater ambitions. About the time we moved in together, he started talking about some big ideas he had for the Drinkards. He believed we were good enough to make it big on the gospel circuit, if we’d just branch out and travel more. If we gave up our day jobs, he said, we could compete with popular gospel singers like Mahalia Jackson, the flamboyant Alex Bradford, and Clara Ward.

  My sister Lee, who was managing our group, wasn’t buying into John’s big dreams. Like my father, she saw gospel singing as ministry, not as a road to fame and fortune—so although she liked John and knew he loved the Drinkards, she was wary of his ambition. She was also put off by his occasional irreverence, as John wasn’t above laughing at the fake “healings” of holy rollers. Once, Lee even threw him out of a Pentecostal church when he couldn’t stop laughing and making comments in the back pew.

  But John felt that with his managerial skills, gift of gab, and knowledge of the gospel circuit, he could successfully manage a singing group. Lee wasn’t about to let him get his hands on the Drinkards, so he had to look elsewhere. As it turned out, my nieces Dionne and Dee Dee—who sang in the New Hope choir and occasionally with the Drinkards—had gotten together with two other girls to form a group called the Gospelaires. John saw his opening, and he began taking the Gospelaires around to churches and gospel shows.

  One evening, while he was sitting backstage at the Apollo Theater with the Gospelaires and a few other performers, another musician came in and asked if anyone knew some backup singers he could hire for a recording session. John said, “Sure, I do!”—and just like that, he got the Gospelaires the gig. That was the beginning of Dionne and Dee Dee’s career as backup artists. And that was also how John officially became their manager.

  Finally, John was right where he always wanted to be, in the middle of the action. He just loved sitting around joking with the moneymen, producers, and musicians, and his easy manner with executives and artists allowed him to get Dionne and the group some fantastic session work. By the early 1960s, they were working with the legendary producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Henry Glover, and artists such as the Drifters, Dinah Washington, Ben E. King, the Coasters, and Solomon Burke. They made good money, but the real money was in being a solo artist. And that’s what John wanted me to pursue.

  “Cissy,” John would tell me, “I can help you do that!” He was always pressing me, reminding me how much money I could be making. He had big ideas about my future in the business, but to his frustration, I just wasn’t interested. I had a good job at RCA, and by then I’d been there for more than ten years, so I had some seniority—something that meant a lot to Depression babies like myself. Also, there was a part of me that was just plain stubborn: I wasn’t going to do something just because John wanted me to do it.

  I also remembered how my father had felt about popular music—how he never allowed us to play it in the house. And I’d seen how artists like Dinah Washington, the Staple Singers, and Sam Cooke were booed and called backsliders after they began singing pop music. So, I decided to resist that particular temptation.

  Besides, by January 1961, I was pregnant again. Our son, Michael, was born in August at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark—strangely enough, in the same room as Gary. I took a few weeks off from my job at RCA, then put baby Michael with Gary into day care so I could go back to work. With two small boys, a full-time job, and singing with the Drinkards, I just didn’t have time for any other commitments.

  But right around that time, John got himself into a jam. He’d promised producer Henry Glover that he’d bring Dionne in to do a session, but she had gotten a call from Scepter Records to do another session for them at the same time. John was stuck, and he begged me to step in. I didn’t want to, but I knew it was important for John to show that he was reliable—so for his sake, I agreed to take Dionne’s place and sing the backup soprano part.

  When we arrived at the studios, I could tell Henry Glover wasn’t too happy to see me walking in the door instead of Dionne. John calmed him down long enough to let him hear me sing—and when Henry heard me, he changed his mind fast. That’s how my journey into background work began—a journey that would change not only my life, but the recording industry, too.

  That session, we were backing up Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly star from Arkansas who was being groomed as the new Elvis. The first day lasted until six in the morning, and we had to come back in for the next three days to finish. By the time we wrapped everything up, I was exhausted, though I had to admit the money was good. Still, I had bad feelings about the job, as I knew my sisters would disapprove.

  As members of a younger generation, Dionne and Dee Dee got a pass from our family on singing popular music. But I was a few years older than they were, so my sisters expected me to stick to the old ways—to uphold the tradition of separating sacred and pop music. I was torn, as I wanted to keep singing backup, but I didn’t want to let down the family. And I’d been struggling with this my whole life, ever since my sister Annie and I used to listen to those old Victrola records in secret at home.

  After a lot of thought and prayer, I finally took the attitude that I could be in the world of secular music, but not of it. I consoled myself with the thought that I wasn’t trying to be a pop star, or bring attention to myself, or make anyone stray—no, I was just doing a job. And that job didn’t make me any less faithful than anyone else. So I decided to keep on doing background singing, never imagining where it would soon lead me.

  As soon as I decided to continue doing background singing, the work came fast and furious. During the first few months after Michael was born, Dionne, Dee Dee, and I worked with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller on an album by the Drifters. From the start, Jerry and Mike were impressed with our rapport, going on about how we “felt each other” and “breathed together.” But you know, it really wasn’t magic—it was just that we’d all been in the New Hope choir, and so we had a lot of experience singing together.

  Jerry and Mike knew how to use everything available to them to create a finished recording—how to pull together the lyrics, the arrangement, the instruments, and the voices to create something special. I admired how they used our voices; they raised pop music to another level. So I watched and studied, and tried to learn as much as I could from them. I loved to sing, but on a deeper level, I wanted to understand how songs really worked, and how they could be made

  better.

  We worked on Drifters songs like “On Broadway,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” and “Please Stay,” rehearsing at Jerry and Mike’s offices in the Brill Building in Manhattan. We were so busy that I had to quit my job at RCA—but the truth was, I earned as much doing two sessions in New York as I did working a whole week at RCA. And I added to those earnings when I joined the union and became the contractor—the person who selects and hires the background singers—for our sessions. Music was now not only my passion, but my profession as well.

  One day while we were recording for the Drifters, the great songwriter Burt Bacharach stopped by to listen. His ears perked right up when he heard Dionne, and before leaving he asked if she could sing on some of his projects. She started out just doing demos of his songs for other artists, but she was determined to do more—and her voice was not to be denied. Burt soon agreed to record her as a solo artist.

  Dionne signed with Scepter Records in 1962, and her solo recording “Don’t Make Me Over” was released in November of that year. Dee Dee, Sylvia Shemwell, and I sang background on the song, and by December it had climbed into the Top Ten. At age twenty-two, Dionne had her first hit record. And that same month, I discovered I was pregnant once again—with the baby that I so desperately hoped would be a girl.

  “Don’t Make Me Over” opened up a steady stream of work for me from Scepter Records. As my pregnancy progressed, the girls and I worked wi
th such artists as Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, and the Shirelles. We also worked with great producers like Leiber and Stoller, Burt Bacharach, Bert Berns, and Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records, which had become the home of soul music. We were busier than ever, and I probably spent at least as much time in the studios as I did at home. John would drive me into Manhattan in the mornings and come back to pick me up when the sessions ended. When we worked for Atlantic, Tom Dowd, who was their genius chief engineer, looked after me during the day—but I think Tom started to get a little nervous during that summer of 1963, when I was overdue and big as a house.

  When I first started doing sessions in New York, I had mixed feelings about working with people I didn’t know—particularly white people. Maybe it stemmed from hearing stories about my family’s experiences back in Georgia, or maybe it was because my life had been centered in Newark’s black working-class neighborhoods, and on St. Luke’s with its black congregation. I just didn’t know many white people growing up, so I didn’t really know what to expect.

  But doing studio work, I got to know and like a little group of brilliant but kooky soul brothers, Jews, Irishmen, Hispanics, and Italians—and they all became my buddies. We were making music that brought together all of our talents and combined all of our cultural backgrounds. It really was a rich tapestry, and learning to appreciate that was the first step in broadening my somewhat narrow worldview.

  Although I was well past my due date, I just kept on singing. And that’s what I was doing right up until that day in August 1963 when Nippy was born.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sweet Inspirations

  I had hoped and prayed to have a baby girl, and now that I finally had her, I wanted to give her the best life we could. And that meant moving out of the apartment where we lived on Eighth Street and into a real house.

  I was laid up for two months after Nippy was born, but John got busy looking for a house in a better neighborhood. He found a place on Wainwright Street in Newark, and we were able to get a loan from a friend and close on it within a few weeks. We also made some improvements, putting in a new kitchen and living room, and soon we had the home I’d always dreamed of. We even got a dog for the kids.

  The best thing about the house, though, was the neighborhood. Our old apartment on Eighth Street had been a third-floor walkup in a busy, working-class urban neighborhood. But the Wainwright House was in an area that was more like a village, with brick row houses occupied by young families like ours, and backyards where children could play safely. It was still a working-class area, but it was quieter and less crowded.

  I was so proud that my children would have physical comforts that I never had growing up. For a lot of black people who left the South and settled in the North during that time, this was something our families always preached to us: We wanted to see our kids do better than we had, to have the chance to really make something of themselves. My parents had given me a strong belief in God and all the love and support I needed. I wanted to give my kids all that, plus the opportunities and material things that my folks couldn’t afford.

  What I never anticipated was that, in trying to give my children a better life and shield them from hardships, they might end up less prepared to face the kind of trauma that life inevitably throws your way. My childhood toughened me up. But my children—especially Nippy—never developed that same toughness. And that would cause even bigger problems later.

  A few months after Nippy was born, I began going back into New York for session jobs. I was making good money, but John had been having problems finding steady work, so much of the time he stayed at home with the kids. Most days, he’d fix Gary’s lunch and send him off to school, then drive me into the city for work. He’d spend the rest of the day taking care of Michael and Nippy, and then come back to pick me up when my session was finished.

  John was good with the children and loved them all, but Nippy was his princess. Even before she could walk, she was a cutup, always knocking things down or getting into some kind of mischief. When he took her out to the porch for some air, he’d cover her with a blanket to keep warm, but she’d rustle around and throw it right off and he’d have to keep running out to put it back on. It was around this time that John started calling her “Nippy,” after a comic strip character who was always getting into trouble. Pretty soon, we all were calling her Nippy.

  She was such a beautiful child—and smart, too. She started walking when she was just six months old. John and I couldn’t believe it. And of course, once she began walking she just got into more trouble. She was always teasing and messing with Thor, the German shepherd we’d gotten for the kids. John used to watch her grab that big old dog with her tiny hands and just laugh. He’d tell me stories when I got home from work, and I was jealous that he got to spend so much time with the kids. But of course, I had to work to support the family.

  In the spring of 1964, almost a year after Nippy’s birth, John’s divorce was at last finalized, and he and I were able to get married. John and I had known since the beginning of our relationship that we wanted to be together, but it was a relief to make it official. Now I had a husband, a family, and a home—and soon, I’d have myself a new singing group, too.

  At the recording studios in New York, our backup group’s reputation kept growing—even as the faces began changing. My niece, Dionne Warwick, went on to her solo career, and soon afterward her sister Dee Dee started to dabble in solo performances, too. Dee Dee sang with us up to 1965, when she signed a deal with Mercury Records, but then we had to replace her. I tried out a lot of different singers, and finally I was able to put together the group and sound I’d been looking for. That group would become known as the Sweet Inspirations, also known as the Sweets.

  Sylvia Shemwell, Myrna Smith, Estelle Brown, and I made up the original Sweet Inspirations, a name Atlantic gave us in January 1967. I had just cut a single with Kapp Records, and I guess Jerry Wexler wanted to make sure that I didn’t follow Dionne and Dee Dee and leave for another label, so Atlantic offered our group a contract. At first, the executives wanted to name us the Inspirations, because of our gospel background. But when they discovered another group had already taken that name, they changed it to the Sweet Inspirations.

  Our beginnings were humble, but the Sweet Inspirations would end up changing the world of background singing. It all began in 1967, when we were chosen to work with Aretha Franklin on her newest record.

  In some ways, I felt I knew Aretha before we even met. As a child I had listened to her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, on the radio, and years later the Drinkard Singers had performed on programs where Aretha was featured. Her records may not have had the sophistication of Hal David and Burt Bacharach songs, but they had something else, a gospel fire that was missing in most popular music. Like me, Aretha—who I called “Ree”—had grown up in the church, so we shared that sensibility. We just understood each other, musically and otherwise.

  I loved that gospel fire in her songs, and we loved singing with each other, as something magical always seemed to happen. Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records called it “a communal thing”: I’d spend a lot of time working out the background parts on Aretha’s tunes, and she’d give me the freedom to put my two cents in. All that time I’d spent learning from producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller paid off when I started improvising our backup parts—something background singers just didn’t do at that point.

  When I first started doing background, session singers would come in, sing whatever the producers told them to sing, and go home. But the Sweets began shaking things up. For one thing, although most groups had three members, I added one more, a fourth voice that would double the part that I sang on top, but an octave lower. That low fourth voice made for a much fuller sound than other backup groups had—and nobody at the time figured out what we were doing to make that sound.

  We also started changing the parts that we were given to sing. I
wasn’t pushy about it—we’d sing whatever parts they gave us. But if something didn’t work as well as it could have, I’d ask if we could try something a little different. And most of the time they’d say, “Okay, Cissy, do what you do.”

  So I’d ask them to play a track, and I’d listen until I got a feeling for where the song was going. I’d try different things in my head, and keep on listening until I felt I had something good. Then the girls would gather around and we’d go to work. I’d say, “Let’s try this,” and when we started singing together, that’s when things would really start to flow.

  Usually, we’d have to change things around a few times until we got it right. I’d use the lyrics of the song, the story the songwriter was telling, to trigger things in my mind—it was kind of call-and-response. I’d listen to the melody and words, and then come up with a corresponding line that would bring out what the artist was singing about. It could be very simple—if the line was “Do you love me,” we might follow it with “Yes I do.” The goal in backup is to find a way to make a good song sound great. And the girls in the Sweets were right on it.

  I always believed that you have to feel what you do—that you can’t just go in and sing words without really feeling the song. That was something I learned singing in church, so when I became a contractor and started putting together the singers for sessions, I chose people who came from backgrounds like my own—from the church. Producers liked what I was doing, and, after a while, they figured out that if they’d just let me handle it, the backgrounds were going to be outstanding. And that’s how background singing became a real industry, where people did more than just show up and go through the motions. It became a respected profession, and the Sweet Inspirations became the industry’s first-call background singers.

  Of course, there were the occasional young producers who didn’t know us, who would say, “No, I’ll tell you what to sing.” I’d just nod my head and we’d do it the way we were asked. A lot of times, the artists would be laughing and whispering to themselves because they knew that the material and the approach weren’t even close to what we could have come up with. And even when those young producers tried to keep us in line, most of the time I’d find a way to get my own ideas into the songs.