Darlene Love, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer made famous by her recordings with Phil Spector in the early 1960s, knew Whitney Houston since she was a little girl.
Love has been close friends with her mother, Cissy Houston, for close to 50 years. Love, in fact, was named one of "Nippy's" godmothers by Cissy.
"There's talent that we all have and there's talent that Nippy had," Love said in a phone interview Saturday. "She took things to an entirely new level.
"If you think of her family — Cissy, all of the her sisters, and Dionne (Warwick) — Whitney embodied all of them. For me, I just go back to remembering her as a little 8-year-old girl and knowing then she was something special. And she saw it through more than any could imagine."
Love said she learned of Whitney's passing in an almost cruelly ironic fashion. After a performance at McLoone's Supper Club in Asbury Park on Saturday night, Love and some friends went to dinner and the conversation turned toward Houston. Love found herself defending Houston and her well-documented battles with drugs.
A few minutes later she overheard people at a nearby table saying that Houston had passed away.
"It felt like I had been struck by a lightning bolt in my gut," Love said. "I was just defending her, like I always have. And the next moment I heard she was gone."
Love said she was always hopeful Houston would overcome her dependencies, but the singer may have felt the weight of doing it under an enormous spotlight.
"I have friends and family who have gotten over it, but there was so much more pressure on her," Love said. "I always told people, if she wasn't who she was, we wouldn't know anything about it.
"I'm going to miss her. No matter what, nobody on this planet will be able to touch her."
The footage below shows a pre-teen Houston singing at the New Hope Baptist Church in 1973.
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