The Beverly Hills Police Department
responded to an emergency call at the Beverly Hilton hotel Saturday, Lt.
Mark Rosen, of the Beverly Hills Police Department said.
Members of hotel staff and fire department
officials attempted to revive a person on the fourth floor, who has
since been confirmed to be Houston, Rosen said.
Officials did not see obvious signs of
criminal intent, and are currently investigating to determine the cause
of death, he said.
Houston's death on the eve of the Grammy
Awards sent shock waves through the music industry, with many stars
expressing shock and sadness.
Brown reportedly broke down back stage before a show with his band New Edition in Southhaven, a few miles south of Memphis.
Brown skipped the first song of the concert,
but appeared onstage for the second. He shouted, "I love you, Whitney.
The hardest thing for me to do is to come on this stage." He then blew a
kiss to the sky with visibly teary eyes.
Her longtime mentor Clive Davis held his
annual concert and dinner Saturday at the hotel where her body was
found. Producer Jimmy Jam, who had worked with Houston, said he
anticipated the evening would become a tribute to her.
Aretha Franklin, her godmother, also said she was stunned.
"I just can't talk about it now," Franklin
said in a short statement. "It's so stunning and unbelievable. I
couldn't believe what I was reading coming across the TV screen."
The Rev. Al Sharpton said he would call for a
national prayer Sunday morning during a service at Second Baptist
Church in Los Angeles.
Houston's death is sure to put a damper on the Grammy's, which are considered music's biggest night of the year.
Jennifer Hudson and Chaka Khan will perform a tribute to Houston at the awards, according to reports.
Grammy executive producer Ken Erhlich said
event organizers believed Hudson -- an Academy Award-winning actress and
Grammy Award-winning artist -- could perform a "respectful musical
tribute" to Houston, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"It's too fresh in everyone's memory to do
more at this time, but we would be remiss if we didn't recognize
Whitney's remarkable contribution to music fans in general, and in
particular her close ties with the Grammy telecast and her Grammy wins
and nominations over the years," Ehrlich told the newspaper.
According to ET Online, Chaka Khan will also perform as part of Sunday night's tribute to Houston.
At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the
music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of
the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless,
powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but
made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.
Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting to Exhale."
She had the perfect voice, and the perfect
image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly
sexual, who maintained perfect poise.
"Six-time GRAMMY winner Whitney Houston was
one of the world's greatest pop singers of all time who leaves behind a
robust musical soundtrack spanning the past three decades," Neil
Portnow, President/CEO of The Recording Academy said in a statement.
"Her powerful voice graced many memorable
and award-winning songs. A light has been dimmed in our music community
today, and we extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends,
fans and all who have been touched by her beautiful voice," he said.
She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.
But by the end of her career, Houston became
a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales
plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was
shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She
confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine
voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had
during her prime.
"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview with then-husband Brown by her side.
It was a tragic fall for a superstar who was
one of the top-selling artists in pop music history, with more than 55
million records sold in the United States alone.
She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.
Houston first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.
"The time that I first saw her singing in her mother's act in a club ... it was such a stunning impact," Davis told "Good Morning America."
"To hear this young girl breathe such fire into this song. I mean, it really sent the proverbial tingles up my spine," he added.
Before long, the rest of the country would
feel it, too. Houston made her album debut in 1985 with "Whitney
Houston," which sold millions and spawned hit after hit. "Saving All My
Love for You" brought her her first Grammy, for best female pop vocal.
"How Will I Know," "You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All"
also became hit singles.
Another multiplatinum album, "Whitney," came
out in 1987 and included hits like "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I
Wanna Dance With Somebody."
The New York Times wrote that Houston
"possesses one of her generation's most powerful gospel-trained voices,
but she eschews many of the churchier mannerisms of her forerunners. She
uses ornamental gospel phrasing only sparingly, and instead of
projecting an earthy, tearful vulnerability, communicates cool
self-assurance and strength, building pop ballads to majestic, sustained
peaks of intensity."
Her decision not to follow the more soulful
inflections of singers like Franklin drew criticism by some who saw her
as playing down her black roots to go pop and reach white audiences. The
criticism would become a constant refrain through much of her career.
She was even booed during the "Soul Train Awards" in 1989.
"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she told Katie Couric
in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not
R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away
from them."
Some saw her 1992 marriage to former New
Edition member and soul crooner Bobby Brown as an attempt to refute
those critics. It seemed to be an odd union; she was seen as pop's pure
princess while he had a bad-boy image, and already had children of his
own. (The couple had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993.) Over the
years, he would be arrested several times, on charges ranging from DUI
to failure to pay child support.
But Houston said their true personalities were not as far apart as people may have believed.
"When you love, you love. I mean, do you
stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby
and I basically come from the same place," she told Rolling Stone in
1993. "You see somebody, and you deal with their image, that's their
image. It's part of them, it's not the whole picture. I am not always in
a sequined gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can
get raunchy."
It would take several years, however, for
the public to see that side of Houston. Her moving 1991 rendition of
"The Star Spangled Banner" at the Super Bowl, amid the first Gulf War, set a new standard and once again reaffirmed her as America's sweetheart.
In 1992, she became a star in the acting
world with "The Bodyguard." Despite mixed reviews, the story of a singer
(Houston) guarded by a former Secret Service agent (Kevin Costner) was an international success.
It also gave her perhaps her most memorable
hit: a searing, stunning rendition of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love
You," which sat atop the charts for weeks. It was Grammy's record of
the year and best female pop vocal, and the "Bodyguard" soundtrack was
named album of the year.
She returned to the big screen in 1995-96
with "Waiting to Exhale" and "The Preacher's Wife." Both spawned
soundtrack albums, and another hit studio album, "My Love Is Your Love,"
in 1998, brought her a Grammy for best female R&B vocal for the cut
"It's Not Right But It's Okay."
But during these career and personal highs, Houston was using drugs. In an interview with Oprah
Winfrey in 2010, she said by the time "The Preacher's Wife" was
released, "(doing drugs) was an everyday thing. ... I would do my work,
but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. ... I
wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself."
In the interview, Houston blamed her rocky
marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against
Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.
Houston would go to rehab twice before she
would declare herself drug-free to Winfrey in 2010. But in the interim,
there were missed concert dates, a stop at an airport due to drugs, and
public meltdowns.
She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson
tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude
behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show,
"Being Bobby Brown," was an example of her
sad decline. Her Sawyer interview, where she declared "crack is whack,"
was often parodied. She dropped out of the spotlight for a few years.
Houston staged what seemed to be a
successful comeback with the 2009 album "I Look To You." The album
debuted on the top of the charts, and would eventually go platinum.
Things soon fell apart. A concert to promote
the album on "Good Morning America" went awry as Houston's voice
sounded ragged and off-key. She blamed an interview with Winfrey for
straining her voice.
A world tour launched overseas, however,
only confirmed suspicions that Houston had lost her treasured gift, as
she failed to hit notes and left many fans unimpressed; some walked out.
Canceled concert dates raised speculation
that she may have been abusing drugs, but she denied those claims and
said she was in great shape, blaming illness for cancellations.
The Associated Press and Newscore contributed to this report.
