Early Life and Career
Whitney Houston was born in what was then a middle-income
neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, the second child of Army
serviceman and entertainment executive John Russell Houston, Jr.
(September 13, 1920 – February 2, 2003), and gospel singer Cissy Houston.
She was of African American, Native American and Dutch descent. Her
mother, along with cousins Dionne
Warwick and Dee Dee
Warwick, godmother Darlene Love
and honorary aunt Aretha
Franklin were all notable figures in the gospel, rhythm and
blues, pop, and soul genres. She met her honorary aunt at age 8, or
9, when her mother took her to a recording studio. Houston was
raised a Baptist, but was also exposed to the Pentecostal church.
After the 1967 Newark riots, the family moved to a middle-class area
in East Orange, New Jersey, when she was four.
At the age of 11, Houston began to follow in her mother's footsteps and started performing as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned to play the piano. Her first solo performance in the church was "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah". When Houston was a teenager, she attended Mount Saint Dominic Academy, a Catholic girls' high school in Caldwell, New Jersey, where she met her best friend Robyn Crawford, whom she described as the "sister she never had". While Houston was still in school, her mother continued to teach her how to sing. In addition to her mother, Franklin, and Warwick, Houston was also exposed to the music of Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, and Roberta Flack, most of whom would have an impact on her as a singer and performer.
Houston spent some of her teenage years touring nightclubs where her mother Cissy was performing, and she would occasionally get on stage and perform with her. In 1977, at age 14, she became a backup singer on the Michael Zager Band's single "Life's a Party". In 1978, at age 15, Houston sang background vocals on Chaka Khan's hit single "I'm Every Woman", a song she would later turn into a larger hit for herself on her monster-selling The Bodyguard soundtrack album. She also sang back-up on albums by Lou Rawls and Jermaine Jackson.
In the early 1980s, Houston started working as a fashion
model after a photographer saw her at Carnegie Hall singing with her
mother. She appeared in Seventeen and became one of the first women
of color to grace the cover of the magazine. She was also featured
in layouts in the pages of Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Young Miss, and
appeared in a Canada Dry soft drink TV commercial. Her striking
looks and girl-next-door charm made her one of the most sought after
teen models of that time. While modeling, she continued her
burgeoning recording career by working with producers Michael
Beinhorn, Bill Laswell and Martin Bisi on an album they were
spearheading called One Down, which was credited to the group
Material. For that project, Houston contributed the ballad
"Memories", a cover of a song by Hugh Hopper of Soft Machine. Robert
Christgau of The Village Voice called her contribution "one of the
most gorgeous ballads you've ever heard". She also appeared as a
lead vocalist on one track on a Paul Jabara album, entitled Paul
Jabara and Friends, released by Columbia Records in 1983.