Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston's mother and a Grammy-winning singer, dies at 91

Cissy Houston, the mother of the late Whitney Houston and a two-time Grammy winner who performed alongside superstar musicians like Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin, has died. She was 91.

Cissy Houston, the mother of the late Whitney Houston and a two-time Grammy winner who performed alongside superstar musicians like Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin, has died. She was 91.

Houston died Monday morning in her New Jersey home while under hospice care for Alzheimer's disease, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told The Associated Press. The acclaimed gospel singer was surrounded by her family.

A church performer from an early age, Houston was part of a family gospel act before breaking through in popular music in the 1960s as a member of the prominent backing group The Sweet Inspirations with Doris Troy and her niece Dee Dee Warwick. The group sang backup for a variety of soul singers including Otis Redding, Lou Rawls and The Drifters. They also sang backup for Dionne Warwick.

Houston's many credits included Franklin’s “Think” and ”(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” The Sweet Inspirations also sang on stage with Presley, whom Houston would remember fondly for singing gospel during rehearsal breaks and telling her that she was “squirrelly.”

“At the end of our engagement with him, he gave me a bracelet inscribed with my name on the outside,” she wrote in her memoir “How Sweet the Sound,” published in 1998. “On the inside of the bracelet he had inscribed his nickname for me: Squirrelly.”

The Sweet Inspirations had their own top 20 single with the soul-rock “Sweet Inspiration,” made in the Memphis studio where Franklin and Springfield among others recorded hits and released four albums just in the late ’60s. The group appeared on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and sang background vocals for The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the song “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” in 1967.

Houston's last performance with the Sweet Inspirations came after the group hit the stage with Presley in a Las Vegas show in 1969. Her final recording session with the group turned into their biggest R&B hit “(Gotta Find) A Brand New Lover” a composition by the production team of Gamble & Huff, who appeared on the group’s fifth album, "Sweet Sweet Soul."