Whitney Houston Dies At 48

Whitney Houston Performing the U.S. National Anthem

Pop singer Whitney Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton hotel in California, her death being pronounced at 3:55 pm local time on Saturday morning, after resuscitation efforts failed.

According to the Beverly Hills Police Department, no signs of criminal intent were found, and the cause of death is yet to be established. More details about her death may be released on Monday, but a full disclosure is expected to be made no sooner than a few months. According to the publicist of hip-hop artist Ray J, who was dating her, her body was discovered by her bodyguard.

Houston performed until Thursday night at a pre-Grammy event in the zone. She was also working at a remake of the 1976 hit “Sparkle,” which is expected to be released in August.

Her death caused a lot of grief among the stars in the music industry, Areta Franklin saying she could not believe what she was reading about it, Quincy Jones saying he was “heartbroken,” and Dolly Parton, the writer of the song “I Will Always Love You,” saying that his heart was one of millions that were broken by the news.

Whitney Houston was born on August 9, 1963, in New Jersey and began her career 20 years later, when music producer Clive Davis spotted her in a NYC nightclub and contracted her musical services immediately, becoming her promoter and mentor.

Two days before she died, he told Piers Morgan in his television show that Houston had a depth and range of soul that rarely ranked at the top level.

The rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at the 1991 Super Bowl placed her on the landscape of the American musical industry. During her entire career she sold 170 million albums, singles and videos, she had a string of Billboard no. 1 in the 1980: “Saving All My Love For You,” “How Will I Know,” “The Greatest Love of All,” “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”

In 1992, Billboard said that the soundtrack for “The Bodyguard” was the one of the 10 biggest-selling albums of all times. The movie includes the song “I Will Always Love You.”

She was the winner of six Grammy awards for R&B music, being the only one to attain such success. The pre-Grammy event programmed for Saturday night was in part a memorial to Whitney Houston. She received the last Grammy in 2000. In 2009 she released the album “I Look To You.”

She was married to Bobby Brown, a “New Edition” star who had problems with the law, and fought the addiction to cocaine and marijuana.