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Friday 17 February 2012

Whitney Houston funeral guests confirmed




               Whitney Houston 1963-2012

 

Whitney Houston's body has been flown from Van Nuys Airport in the Los Angeles area east to New Jersey, where a funeral will be held at the end of the week.

Guest
Aretha Franklin & Stevie Wonder will sing at Whitney Houston's funeral, to be held in New Jersey on Saturday.

Clive Davis, her musical mentor, will speak at the ceremony, which will include contributions from her cousin Dionne Warwick & singer Alicia Keys.

Houston's ex-husband Bobby Brown & Kevin Costner, with whom he starred in The Bodyguard, are among those who have been invited to the private service.



Police plan to block off streets around the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark.

No without an invitation will be allowed near the building & fans have been urged to stay home.

The funeral will be shown live on US tv after the Houston relatives agreed to have a single video camera inside the church.
The ceremony will begin at 12:00 EST (17:00 GMT).
Various media crews are already in place outside the church, hoping to capture footage of the guests arriving & leaving.
He told CNN he hoped the day would be a celebration of the singer's talent.

Songwriter Valerie Simpson, whose I am Every Woman was covered by Houston in 1992, will even be attending the funeral.

"It had everything - it was elastic, it had meaning, it had range, it had soul, it had pop sensibility & an ability to interpret a lyric in a way that made you feel it."

"Her personal trials & tribulations have nothing to do together with her artistry," he told Piers Morgan. "Her record is her music. That amazing voice."

The funeral comes week after Houston was present in her hotel bathroom in Los Angeles.

'No signs of stress'

Reginald Dowdley, the late singer's make-up artist, spent hours together with her on the day before her death & said he saw "no signs of stress".

Officials are waiting for the results of toxicology tests that will help them ascertain how the 48-year-old died.

"She was warm & inviting & welcoming," he said. "She didn't appear erratic. I didn't get any of that from her at all."

Houston was of the world's best-selling artists from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, selling 170 million records worldwide.

Sales of her records have soared since her death was announced last Saturday.

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