Brown Out?...

[New York Daily News Report]

NEWSFILE: 17 JULY 2006
 

Whitney With CeCe...

[EURWeb Report]

WHITNEY HOUSTON HANGS OUT WITH CECE WINANS: Old friends just chillin’ recently

Whitney and CeCe were hanging out recently (June 30) in Nashville,TN. According to the Tennessean Newspaper the old girlfriends were seen dining at the Cheesecake Factory. Whitney also attended church services at Born Again Church with the singers.

The pair sang “Count on Me” on the Waiting to Exhale Soundtrack, a song that promised “a friendship that would never end.”

Houston is a “spiritual” person who sang in her church and whose mother Cissy was a past Gospel singer. Perhaps she continues to cling to her roots to fight drug addiction, which has been reported over the last several months to be at an all-time low.


Maybe Whitney was looking to count on an old friend for support during this perilous period of her life. CeCe’s publicist would not comment when asked if Winans was coming to Whitney’s rescue, but has stated that their time together was not business related (i.e., they are not talking about recording anything.)

Let’s hope that Houston’s hanging with CeCe is a sign of a positive change.
 

NEWSFILE: 17 JULY 2006
 

Whitney's Rep: No Comment On Marriage Rumours...

[San Francisco Chronicle Report]

Houston and Brown Fight Break-Up Rumors

R&B star Bobby Brown has slammed reports he has split from his singer wife Whitney Houston, insisting they happily celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary Tuesday.

The hitmaker was reportedly looking for female companions after he performed alongside En Vogue and Bel Biv Devoe at the '90s Reunited concert at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre on Saturday night.

Several backstage sources told the New York Daily News that Brown reportedly announced he and Houston had split up and he was "looking for a new tenderoni. Anybody want to come home with me tonight?"

The newspaper claims Brown has been sleeping in different hotels around the Los Angeles area, while Houston and their teenage daughter, Bobbi Christina, remain at home.

Brown's representative insists the couple enjoyed a quiet dinner to mark their anniversary and are still happily married.

Houston's spokeswoman Nancy Seltzer says she has "no comment on the state of their union."
 

NEWSFILE: 4 JULY 2006
 

Patti: Let's Save Whitney...

[Philadelphia Daily News Report]

PATTI LABELLE told the audience at Thursday's Rhythm & Blues Foundation's Pioneer Awards that it is the music community's duty to come together and save Whitney Houston.

LaBelle told the crowd at the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue that Houston, who has long battled drug abuse, is the "eighth wonder of the world."

"Whitney needs help. We need to bring her up," continued LaBelle, who co-hosted the ceremony with Smokey Robinson.

The banter of LaBelle and Robinson, especially LaBelle, kept the crowd laughing for much of the night, as did Bill Cosby, who appeared briefly on stage.

Rapper Beanie Sigel, dressed casual in an orange polo shirt and jeans, told us his left arm is "feeling better." He was shot twice in the arm during a robbery in May.

Motown founder Berry Gordy was the top honoree of the evening. Other honorees included Chubby Checker, the late Otis Redding (whose family was there to pick up his award), the Delfonics, Bettye LaVette, Barbara Mason, Thom Bell, Frankie Beverly and Maze. Presenters included Gerald Levert, Jerry Butler, Jill Scott, Ashford & Simpson, James Ingram, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Shaffer, Dee Dee Sharp, and, of course, hit-makers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

NEWSFILE: 3 JULY 2006
 

Patti Calls On Support For Whitney...

[Philadelphia Inquirer Report]

The graying greats gathered for the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's first awards ceremony to be held in its new home city.

By Dan DeLuca

Inquirer Music Critic

This was a night for the old heads.

A night when Patti LaBelle declared, "I'm 62 years old, I'm diabetic, and I am special!" A night when her cohost, Smokey Robinson, 66 but (as LaBelle said) "still drinking that Dick Clark young water," joked that "your memory is the second thing to go."

And a night when Motown founder Berry Gordy, the lifetime-achievement honoree at the Rhythm & Blues Foundation's 14th Pioneer Awards - and first held in its new home of Philadelphia - kept it serious.

Gordy was feted along with Chubby Checker, the Delfonics, Bettye LaVette, Barbara Mason, Frankie Beverly and Maze, Thom Bell, and the late Otis Redding. After being introduced by Philadelphia International Records head Kenny Gamble on Thursday night, Gordy reminded those in the nattily dressed crowd why they had paid as much as $1,250 a ticket to come to the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue, and take a gander at such luminaries as Bonnie Raitt, Jill Scott, Gerald Levert and Bill Cosby.

"Black music is a chronicle of our collective emotional journey - pain and suffering, happiness and celebration," Gordy preached. "We must honor it, respect it and protect it."

The R&B Foundation is a nonprofit organization formerly based in New York that doesn't hand out trophies. It also gives away cash to down-and-out musicians to help with health-care costs, and to deserving honorees who could use an extra $10,000 in their bank accounts.

That's how much was given to both Mason - best known for her 1967 hit "Yes, I'm Ready," which she sang this night, in fine voice - and songwriter-producer Thom Bell. Bell was correctly identified, along with Gamble and Leon Huff, as "one of the mighty three architects of the innovative Philly soul sound," by David Letterman sidekick Paul Schaffer, who sang in Bell's honor, though not so well as James Ingram did.

The foundation's move here has been engineered by Gamble, who said he was "in awe of the possibilities of Philadelphia becoming the home of R&B," much as Memphis captures tourist dollars as the domicile of the blues, and Cleveland draws people to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

There's a great tradition here that stretches from the Intruders and Delfonics - the trio who were joined by Robinson and LaBelle as they performed a rough-around-the-edges-but-full-of-feeling "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" - to contemporary acts like Scott and Musiq Soulchild.

That doesn't mean it makes any more logical sense for an R&B center like the one planned for the site of the Royal Theater on South Street to be here in Philadelphia rather than, say, New York, or Detroit, or Muscle Shoals, Ala. But as Gamble recognizes, it's a business plan with potential or, as Mayor Street put it, "an idea so good you wish you could call it your own."

Fittingly, there was plenty of Philadelphia in Thursday's show, which, without the benefit of TV producers to move things along, stretched to nearly four hours but was rarely dull. Raitt, introduced by LaBelle as, "You my dawg!," remembered getting her start here in the early 1970s after moving to town with a boyfriend. Many an honoree invoked the name of the late, influential WDAS DJ Georgie Woods. Jerry "The Iceman" Butler, recalled spending his honeymoon working at the Uptown Theater on Broad Street.

Among the local honorees, who included Beverly and the Delfonics, there was Checker. In a lengthy speech, Checker compared R&B to "an Arabian horse" and his own hit, "The Twist," to "Alexander Graham Bell saying, 'Watson, is that you?' " And all night long, LaBelle provided the "off-the-script" moments, which prompted Gordy to thank her for being "so real - in fact, too real."

Early on, the Philadelphia diva in six-inch-heels called on the foundation to intervene in Whitney Houston's life: "Whitney needs help. Not just musically, but mentally." She sang gorgeously improvised bits off her coming gospel album, and warned talkative audience members that if they didn't pipe down, "I'm going to have to take my knife out and cut somebody."

And she addressed the chief honoree when she complained that now that she has been dropped by her record company, she, too, is in need. "Berry Gordy said, 'Patti, call me when you need me.' Well, n-, I'm calling you now."

NEWSFILE: 1 JULY 2006