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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies at 48

Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies

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Whitney Houston
Evan Agostini / AP
FILE - In this Sept. 1, 2009 file photo, singer Whitney Houston performs on 'Good Morning America' in New York's Central Park. Houston, who reigned as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, has died, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012. She was 48.(AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
updated 2 hours 11 minutes ago

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LOS ANGELES — Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Houston's publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston's death came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday's ceremony. Houston's longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

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 he perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

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.
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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.

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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."
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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.








Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Nello Ferrara, 93, invented Lemonheads

Nello Ferrara, 93, invented Lemonheads, saw MacArthur in occupied Japan, sang with Sinatra

BY MAUREEN O’DONNELL Staff Reporter modonnell@suntimes.com February 7, 2012 12:42AM


Nello Ferrara was a singer who liked to serenade people.

But to snackers with a sweet tooth, he was better known as the inventor of spicy-hot Atomic FireBalls and lip-puckering Lemonheads.

Mr. Ferrara, the chairman of Chicago’s Ferrara Pan Candy Co., died Friday at his home in River Forest at age 93.

The company produces treats including Red Hots, Black Forest Gummy Bears, Boston Baked Beans and Jawbusters.

Mr. Ferrara came up with the idea of spicy-hot Atomic FireBalls in 1954, after serving in Occupied Japan in the post-atom bomb era, according to his son, company CEO Salvatore Ferrara II.

Nello Ferrara was a young attorney when he worked on a U.S. Army war crimes tribunal in Tokyo. He often saw the jut-jawed, hard-charging General Douglas MacArthur.

“They worked in the same building,” Salvatore Ferrara II said. His father told him the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers “was his own man. You did what he said, and that was it. He was pretty stern.”

Nello’s father, the original Salvatore Ferrara — who was from the Rome-Naples region — founded the company in Chicago in 1908, selling the candy-coated almonds known as “confetti” that signify good luck at Italian weddings.

Mr. Ferrara grew up around Halsted and Taylor Street. When he was 7 or 8, “They used to have tour buses that would go down Taylor Street and show the tourists the old Italian neighborhood,” his son said. “He would stand by the door of the bus and he would start to sing. Every day he would make a dollar or two. He would sing old Italian songs, ‘O Sole Mio.’ ”

He had to repeat first grade “because they said he didn’t speak English well enough,” his son said. But Mr. Ferrara went on to attend St. Ignatius College Prep and DePaul University law school.

After the war, he returned home and practiced law. “My mother was a legal secretary working for another lawyer,” said his daughter, Nella Davy. “One day he went over there to pick up a brief that she was typing and he just fell in love with her.” He and Marilyn were wed 63 years.

Mr. Ferrara joined the family business, where he developed Lemonheads in 1962. He joked he came up with the idea because his son was born with a head shaped like a lemon.

The company grew to employ an estimated 800 people. It produces about 1 million pounds of candy a year at several plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Its flagships are in Bellwood and Forest Park.

In his free time, Mr. Ferrara enjoyed playing cards and golfing at Ridgemoor Country Club. But his lifelong passion was singing.

In fact — after a few duets with Frank Sinatra — he deemed himself the better singer, his son said.

Mr. Ferrara helped build Villa Scalabrini nursing home, where the then-Italo-American residents would be treated to shows by stars like Jimmy Durante, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

As a result of the Villa Scalabrini shows, “he sang with Frank Sinatra out in Palm Springs a couple of times,” Salvatore Ferrara II said.

Family meant everything to him. “He would call his kids and his grandkids to tell them how much he loved them and how much he missed them, and how he couldn’t wait to see them again,” his son said.

Mr. Ferrara often phoned his daughter Nella at another family business, the Ferrara bakery, to serenade her with “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

“I’d say [to a customer] ‘Sweetie, can you just give me a minute? I can’t tell my dad not to sing to me,’ ” she said.

“If somebody was having a birthday at a restaurant, even when he couldn’t walk anymore — he’d have a cane and a walker — he’d get up and say ‘Excuse me, can I sing to you?’ and he’d sing them Happy Birthday,” she said.

His Sundays were reserved for big Italian family dinners, complete with “macaroni and gravy” — pasta and sauce. “If you were in town,” his son said, “You better be there.”

“He was an icon in the industry,” said Larry Graham, president of the National Confectioners Association. “He was known for helping out other candy companies in distress, for cementing deals with just a handshake, and for being a great ambassador for the industry.”

He was well-liked by employees. One even named his son “Nello” after him, Salvatore Ferrara II said.

“He guided Ferrara Pan Candy Company through good times and bad and helped candy makers of all stripes whenever asked,” said Patrick J. Huffman of Warrell Corp., a candy contractor. “Every visit with Nello was filled with laughter and singing.”

Mr. Ferrara had a fondness for white shoes, no matter the season. He will be buried in a black Armani suit — and white shoes.

He is also survived by his daughter Serajean Aliota; his sister, Florence Stillo, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.