Private funeral planned for Houston
NEWARK, N.J. — The body of Whitney Houston was resting at a funeral home in her birthplace in Newark, N.J., on Tuesday, awaiting a private memorial service on Saturday at the New Jersey church where she honed her singing skills.
A spokesman for the Whigham Funeral Home told reporters on Tuesday that a private funeral service will be held Saturday at the New Hope Baptist Church, the Newjersey church wherehouston once sang growing up. There will not be a wake, the spokesman said.
The body of the beloved singer, one of the biggest stars of her generation, was flown to New Jersey late on Monday from Los Angeles.
Fans had gathered outside the funeral home to greet a golden hearse carrying Houston that arrived just before midnight on Monday under tight security.
Her death on Saturday in a Beverly Hills hotel stunned the music world, her fans and her family. She had been found unconscious and underwater in a bathtub in a Beverly Hills hotel, according to police. They have declined to speculate on the cause of her death at age 48.
An autopsy was completed on Sunday, and a final death report is pending completion of an official investigation and toxicology reports that may take weeks.
Houston hails from music royalty and counts many stars who will likely attend the funeral service. She is the cousin of Dionne Warwick and the daughter of Cissy Houston, who backed up Aretha Franklin. The69-year-old Franklin is her godmother.
HOLLYWOOD — One day during the late winter of 1985 I received a call from an RCA Records publicist inviting me to a special showcase event going on that evening.
They had a new artist that they were stoked about — fresh-faced, but with an assured vocal command that sounded far more mature than that of most 21-yearolds.
They had brought her to town (I was still living in Toronto at the time) to perform a selection of songs from her soon-to-bereleased debut album and thought that I might like to see a sensationin-the-making. I passed. I recall mumbling something about having a deadline to deal with, but the more likely truth was this: I’d get a lot of calls from publicists wanting me to write about the next-big-thing, and there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary-sounding about this one.
He added that she had some famous relatives in the business, but even back then I had come to learn that where nepotism went, talent seldom followed.
I again expressed my regrets that I’d be unable to attend. Today I regret that I didn’t go. A few months later, RCA/ Arista’s ingenue with the big singing voice was sitting pretty atop the pop charts with her first single, You Give Good Love.
By the time the year was over, she’d log two additional worldwide smash hits, and, an entire year later, her self-titled debut album, Whitney Houston, was still No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
When I finally did get a chance to see Whitney performing live — at the Montreal Forum during the summer of 1987 — she was already a bona fide superstar, even if she was still struggling to find a comfortable stage presence to match those resilient vocal chords.
We all know what happened