How Sweet the Sound

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see."

When Cissy Houston sings "Amazing Grace" on her 1997 Grammy Award-winning album, Face to Face, her soul-stirring passion leaves no doubt that this is a woman blessed with a beautiful voice and a life story to be shared.  In How Sweet the Sound: My Life with God and Gospel, Cissy tells of the good and the bad of life with as much emotion and depth as she sings her beloved gospel music.

Cissy is a Grammy-winning singer, but this isn't about popularity.  She is the proud mother of pop-music sensation Whitney Houston, but this isn't about fame.  She starred in off-Broadway shows such as This Is My Song, and shared the screen with her daughter in The Preacher's Wife.  But Cissy Houston's life is really about finding meaning, direction, and love; it is about being a woman of high moral principles and integrity in a world where both seem to be lacking; it is about being a wife, a mother, and a sister in the tug-of-war between family and a career that took her all around the world.  Hers is the story of gospel music, from slavery to salvation based on God's "amazing grace."

Born as Cissy Drinkard in a tough Newark, New Jersey, neighborhood in September of 1933, she was the youngest of eight children.  With her father's talent and love of four-part gospel, she started singing at a young age and never stopped, no matter what happened in her life.  In How Sweet the Sound, Cissy weaves the many threads of tragedy and triumph in her inspiring life together into one great melody of joy that will raise the spirits of fans and readers everywhere.

Gospel music artist Cissy Houston won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Soul Gospel album for Face to Face.  She is the minister of music at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, and lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  

Jonathan Singer is a New York native and an author and editor with extensive experience in the music industry.  He is the author of Where Jesus Walked, and is at work on his next book, the Doubleday Pocket Church Guide.  He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.