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

by Houston, Cissy

  The usual route for a new artist is to record some demos and take them around to record companies. But by hiring Tara Productions, John and I were hoping to go in a different direction. Right away, they launched a fast-paced campaign to bring Nippy into the public eye. In 1982, she released her first full lead vocal recording, “Memories,” on the album One Down by the group Material, and she also got hired to do some advertising jingles for radio and television. In one 1983 ad for Canada Dry Ginger Ale, she sang a little ditty with two other women, dressed up like a diner waitress. She looked so cute, dancing around with her bottle of ginger ale and singing with a beautiful big smile on her face.

  While Tara Productions was working to create interest in Nippy, Aretha called me to do background on her next album, Get It Right. Luther Vandross was producing, so I got to work with two of my best friends in the industry—and we had a ball doing that album. We’d have dinner together and reminisce about the turns our lives had taken—and we also talked about Nippy. Both Luther and Ree were convinced she was going to be a huge star.

  Later on, I would tease Ree about supposedly being Nippy’s godmother—a story that started years before, when I was touring with her and she came over to our house on Dodd Street. Nippy was so impressed with Aretha that she started telling all her friends she was her godmother, and the story stuck because Ree never denied it. Eventually, reporters picked it up and everybody assumed it was true. And Nippy never did stop telling people that.

  I loved hanging with my old friends, especially since being in that big old empty house without my family just made me feel sad. John’s mother had moved in with me, but it wasn’t the same as having a house full of kids and a husband. In 1983, I turned fifty, and I was lonely. But soon I found solace in a surprising place.

  Though John and I were separated, our work together on Nippy’s career and the fact that he gave me rides to my gigs in New York meant we still saw quite a lot of each other. And we never stopped being attracted to each other, so—one thing led to another, and soon he and I were seeing even more of each other. We spent some weekends together in an out-of-state getaway he had bought, and we enjoyed ourselves more than we had in years. I think we both found some relief in getting away from the pressures of work and overseeing Nippy’s career, and that distance enabled us to enjoy each other again.

  Of course, back home in New Jersey, we each did our own thing, while also focusing on working with Tara Productions on Nippy’s career. In 1983, Tara Productions decided to feature Nippy in a series of showcase events open only to record company honchos, including one at Sweetwaters that I helped them set up. Gerry Griffith, an A&R rep from Arista records, had tried to sign Nippy before, and he convinced his boss, Clive Davis, to come see the Sweetwaters showcase. That night, Nippy was unbelievable, and after she sang “Greatest Love of All,” the whole place erupted. Between her voice, her looks, and her stage presence, she must have looked like a golden goose to those record executives.

  All those years of learning, rehearsing, and performing had paid off. Young as she was, Nippy was a true professional. She had been watching me in sessions and onstage for years, picking up pacing, breathing, and microphone techniques, and then adding her own little nuances, too. My son Michael used to joke with me about Nippy’s technique—“Ma,” he’d say, “Nippy should be in jail for stealing all your riffs and everything. You should sue her.” I appreciated Michael’s admiration and loyalty, and Nippy did pick up a lot of things from me and others—every singer does. And though he was right that there was definitely a big piece of me in her performance, she’d also watched and learned from some of the greatest singers around, such as Chaka, Luther, Aretha, Dionne, Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, and many others. But from the minute she decided that all she wanted to do was sing, Nippy began developing a unique talent. And by the time she performed for those executives at Sweetwater’s, she owed nothing to anyone or anything except that God-given talent. Nippy was absolutely spectacular, with a style all her own.

  That night, Clive was as impressed as Griffith had been, and he immediately offered Nippy a contract. Clive didn’t offer the biggest advance, nor was Arista the largest company to make Nippy an offer—Electra was. John wanted Nippy to sign with Electra because of the money. But I disagreed. “It’s not about the money,” I told John. “It’s about the future.”

  Arista may have offered a smaller advance, but I was more impressed with the amount of money they budgeted for recording and promoting Nippy’s first album. Besides, Clive Davis was one of the biggest names in the industry—he wasn’t called the “Music Man” for nothing. We signed with Clive because I trusted him to know what he was doing, and right from the start, he began taking steps to make Nippy a star.

  On June 23, 1983, Nippy made her national television debut, with Clive at her side, on The Merv Griffin Show. She was just nineteen, and understandably a little nervous. I was there in the studio with her, and during rehearsal, when I noticed that the band sounded a little ragged, a little out of synch, I decided to do something about it. No way was I going to see my baby’s television debut messed up by a band that didn’t know the arrangement! No one saw me doing it, because the band was behind a curtain, but I just stepped up and directed them during Nippy’s performance.

  “Just be calm,” I told her, “and sing it like it’s supposed to be sung. Don’t worry about the band or anything else.” And she did—she sang her heart out. Looking at a clip of that performance now, I can’t believe how young and excited she seems. Yet even though she was jittery beforehand, she just has a look of serenity on her face all the way through. Nippy was happy she did well, but she was also relieved when it was over. She was even happier when people really started to take notice of her because of that appearance.

  Despite the excitement around her, the Arista execs took their time with Nippy—they didn’t start working on her album right away, and when they did, it took two full years to complete it. Clive wanted to craft her image, and he wanted to make absolutely sure they chose the right songs and producers for her debut. As they were mapping it out, sometimes she’d call me to ask about a song for her album—“What do you think, Mommy?” I always answered honestly, so even though Clive was behind the song selection, I had my voice in there, too.

  Just because Clive took his time with Nippy didn’t mean that she was doing nothing but recording the album full-time. In 1984, Clive also arranged for Nippy to record a duet with Teddy Pendergrass. That song, “Hold Me,” appeared on Pendergrass’s album Love Language—and when it was released, it climbed to number five on the R&B charts, the first time she’d been on the charts. That summer, Nippy played a few TV roles, too, singing with Jermaine Jackson on the soap As the World Turns, and playing a bit part in the Nell Carter sitcom Gimme a Break!

  At the same time, Nippy’s managers kept working to build her image. They called in a designer to create a stage wardrobe for her, but when I saw it I almost lost my mind—those dresses were so revealing, I thought they’d been created for a stripper. Nippy hadn’t objected, but I sure did.

  “You can put all that crap right back,” I told them. “I don’t know who you got that for, but Whitney is not wearing it. She is not shaking no butt, showing no skin, nothing like that.” Anybody could dress like a streetwalker, but my daughter didn’t have to—she could sing! I told them I’d take care of Nippy’s clothes, and I did for a little while, until she got her own wardrobe person and stylist.

  I played a pretty active role in Nippy’s career in those early days, but soon enough I stepped back and entrusted most of the responsibility to Clive. It felt a bit strange to step back, but I knew that Nippy wanted and needed to find her own way professionally. And I had a lot of respect for Clive and his vision for her; he was someone I knew I could trust with my daughter’s future. Nippy did still seek out my opinion about songs, and she almost always played them for me when she was choosing material, but from
early on, Clive had a major part in shaping her career.

  When Clive at last finalized the producers and songs for Nippy’s album, it was a list of heavyweights, from songwriter-producer Kashif to Jermaine Jackson. This was an exciting time for Nippy—she was just twenty years old, and here she was being courted by some of the biggest names in the business. And a few of them took that “courting” a little bit too literally.

  Jermaine Jackson, who was trying to step out of the shadow of his superstar brother Michael, turned out to be interested in Nippy for more than just her singing talent. And Jermaine was a nice enough guy—but he was married, so I wasn’t too thrilled when Nippy went out with him a couple of times. She was always a big fan of Michael Jackson, so maybe that had something to do with it. And anyway, when I talked to her about it, she just said, “Mom, I ain’t doing nothing.” She was over eighteen and living on her own now, so there wasn’t much of anything I could say to her about that.

  After two full years of work, Arista finally released Nippy’s debut album, Whitney Houston, in February 1985. The studio had set a budget of two hundred thousand dollars for it, but the final cost was more than twice that. Everybody was anxious for the record to do well, so we were all a little disappointed when it started slowly—but over the spring, the album started to sell, and by the end of the summer it was on Billboard’s R&B and pop charts. And then the strangest thing happened: it just kept on selling.

  I’ve always thought that one of the reasons that record’s sales started slowly was that it had a lot of ballads for a pop album. Nippy was a real singer, and the arrangements on the record were meant to showcase her voice, so it took a little bit of time to get traction. But by the following summer, almost a year and a half after its release, Whitney Houston was the number one pop record in the country.

  Even before the record hit stores, Clive Davis had set up a busy schedule of touring for Nippy. She started with a promotional tour, which is a busy, thankless time of flying all over the place to try to get people to pay attention to your upcoming record. She’d make two or three appearances a day, usually in small venues, and she had only her manager, Gene Harvey, traveling with her.

  I think it got kind of lonely for Nippy on that promotional tour, especially since she knew she didn’t have a happy, full house on Dodd Street to come home to anymore. For the first time, she got a taste of what it was like to be a star. And although she was always a fantastic performer and could connect with people onstage, I think it was tiring for her. Even though she would always smile and chat with strangers from the time she was young, a part of Nippy was actually very shy. She needed time to herself, and time with people who loved her. On that promotional tour, she didn’t get a whole lot of either, while also discovering, for better and worse, what it was like to suddenly have your time belong to other people.

  After the album came out, Clive had set up a regular tour for her. Now she was performing in bigger venues, though usually as an opener for a more established act. Because she only had the one album, she didn’t even have enough material for a whole set, so she’d throw in some cover songs to fill it out. She was off on her own now, and when she was onstage, she had no one to fall back on—Nippy was the show, and she had to be great. It was a lot of pressure for a young woman who’d never really had to take care of herself. She knew she had to step up, and so she did. But it wasn’t easy.

  With the success of Whitney Houston, Nippy went from being a relatively unknown model and singer to a celebrity. Before, she could walk down any street in any city and never worry about people messing with her, but now, everybody suddenly wanted to talk to her, to touch her. It would have been overwhelming for anyone, but for Nippy, with her desire to please people and her natural shyness, having fame hit with such force was really difficult. She was the most exciting young singer to hit the airwaves in years, whether she was ready for that or not.

  In February 1986, Nippy flew to Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards. She had been touring for months on end, so no one could blame her if she was feeling a little worn down by it all. Maybe I was just being overprotective, but I was a little worried about her. And I was also mad—as was Clive Davis—about the fact that she’d been snubbed in one of the Grammy categories.

  Nippy had received four nominations, but she was left out of the Best New Artist category. Apparently, she was disqualified because of the duets she did on those albums by Teddy Pendergrass and Jermaine Jackson back in 1984. This just seemed silly, like she was being punished for

  nothing. She was obviously the best up-and-coming new artist around, even if she wouldn’t get any official recognition for it.

  I wondered whether Nippy’s success wasn’t stirring up some kind of resentment among other performers. Nippy was scheduled to sing during the ceremony, and when we went to the rehearsals, it seemed like some of the other artists were giving her a little bit of the cold shoulder. There was a whole group of musicians and performers standing around the first time we walked in, and Nippy, who was always pleasant, open, and welcoming, walked up to them and said “Hi, I’m Whitney.” They knew who she was, of course, but they all just stood there looking at her. Nippy was stung by that, and when we walked away she asked me, “Mommy, what’s wrong with them? Don’t they like me?” I just told her not to worry about it—what else could I do?

  I don’t know, maybe those other performers were just shy, or maybe it’s a Hollywood thing, or maybe, knowing she was young and came from a Christian family, they figured she was just a goody-two-shoes. Whatever the case was, being the newcomer made Nippy a little anxious, and she looked up to a lot of those other performers, so I just wish they could have been a little more gracious, or even just polite, to her. One person who was really sweet to her, though, was Michael Jackson’s oldest sister, Rebbie, who walked right up at the rehearsal and gave Nippy a big old hug. I know Nippy appreciated it, and I did, too.

  At the awards show, Nippy gave a beautiful performance of “Saving All My Love for You,” and later in the evening she won Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female for that same song. Her cousin Dionne Warwick was the presenter, and Dionne was so excited, she just about squeezed the life out of Nippy when she came up to accept the award. As everybody clapped and cheered, Nippy looked out over the audience and said, “Do you believe this?!” I’m not sure she could—and yet this was only the beginning.

  CHAPTER 9

  Fame

  By the fall of 1986, Whitney Houston was still on top of the charts, Nippy had started working on her second album, and her success was growing. But success breeds criticism, and Nippy wasn’t immune. In late September, when the MTV Video Music Awards were held, the backlash started.

  Nippy was nominated in two categories for the awards, winning one for her “How Will I Know” video. She also performed “How Will I Know” and “Greatest Love of All” during the live show. But the MTV awards weren’t like the Grammys, which had a history of honoring black artists in all types of music. MTV hadn’t been around that long then, but it already had a reputation for ignoring videos by black performers.

  Until Nippy came along, Michael Jackson was one of the few black performers whose videos aired regularly on MTV. But once Nippy began putting out videos, MTV played those, too—she was the first black female artist the channel showed on a regular basis. I thought that was a good thing, a breakthrough for her and other black artists. But some people thought it meant something else: that Nippy’s music wasn’t “black enough.”

  This was the first time Nippy heard that particular criticism, and it wouldn’t be the last. It bothered her, but I just told her she should be proud she was able to perform a whole variety of material, and not just R&B. “Sing the kind of music you can relate to, the kind you feel,” I told her. “Don’t be influenced by people who want to put you into some dumb little box.” This was the first time this had ever come up for Nippy, and while it hurt her, I don’t think she
took it to heart. With her second album now in the works, it was more important than ever for her to stick to her own principles and shut out the noise of the critics.

  Whitney Houston stayed on the charts so long, Arista had to postpone the release of Nippy’s second album, Whitney. But when it finally came out in the summer of 1987, it set all kinds of new records. No woman had ever debuted at number one with any album, but Nippy did it. And in the months to come, she just kept on releasing hit singles and selling records.

  Nippy had never cared a whole lot about money, and she didn’t start now. She just was never one of those people who has to go out and buy the latest this and the most expensive that. But once she started getting some royalties in from her two records, she did decide to buy herself a new house.

  Now, the truth is, John was the one in our family who was more interested in money. He told Nippy he’d help her figure out what kind of house to buy, and how to decorate it, and when she said yes, he just went to town. On his advice, she bought a magnificent five-bedroom mansion on a five-acre estate in Mendham Township, New Jersey. And then she turned it over to her daddy to furnish and decorate it. On the night before her housewarming, she told a family friend that just a few hours earlier she had seen what it looked like for the first time. It wasn’t really Nippy’s style, but even she had to admit it was gorgeous.

  I was thrilled with Nippy’s new house and hoped it would be a place she could one day settle down and start a family. I was less thrilled, then, when she invited Robyn to move into the Mendham estate with her. Mendham was even farther away from my house than her place in Woodbridge had been, and I didn’t like Robyn any more now than I had before, but my daughter was an adult and could make her own choices. I was not going to let my feelings about Robyn or anyone keep me from my baby forever. Besides, I didn’t hate Robyn; I was just concerned about what I perceived to be her influence on Nippy.