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CABARET: WHITNEY HOUSTON
For the last several years, those who have seen Whitney Houston perform with her mother, Cissy, in local churches and clubs have predicted a bright future for her as a mainstream pop-soul singer. Miss Houston, who is now 21 years old, is a dignified, statuesque performer with a powerful, penetrating pop-gospel voice, a tightly reined sense of dynamics and a controlled way of embellishing a phrase that steers clear of any flowery excess.
Even at her most exuberant, one senses that Miss Houston is holding something in reserve for a very special occasion.
Miss Houston, who is playing a solo engagement at Sweetwater's (170 Amsterdam Avenue, at 68th Street) through today, has just released her first solo album on Arista Records. And even though her songs from the album are limited to the formulated demands of pop radio, Miss Houston's quality shines through the cliches. That quality, which also illuminated her first set on Wednesday, is an emotional and stylistic steadiness in which the singer immediately locates the through-line of a song and carries it forward with directness and strength and an utter lack of pretention.
The sustained power of Miss Houston's steel-edged declamation, with its sweet undercurrents, at some moments recalled Aretha Franklin at her least mannered and at others suggested what Diana Ross might sound like if she had a much larger voice.
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