Review by Richard Shumate

Web posted on: Friday, May 29, 1998 4:23:37 PM

(CNN) -- Cissy Houston may be better known to the mass audience as the mother of pop diva Whitney Houston rather than as a superstar in her own right. But long before there even was a Whitney, Cissy was making music and making history as a gospel singer.

Her new book, "How Sweet The Sound", chronicles a remarkable life, telling first of her work with her brothers and sisters as the Drinkard Singers during the formative days of gospel and then of her later work as a backup singer on some of the biggest hits of the 1960s, spanning from Aretha Franklin to Van Morrison, from Dusty Springfield to Elvis.

More than that, though, "How Sweet The Sound" is a testimony of Cissy Houston's abiding and unshakable Christian faith, a faith which sustained her when she was growing up in poverty in Newark and guided her through the minefields of the music business. It is also very much the story of how she has integrated her faith into all aspects of her life, including being a mother to three children.

The pivotal moment comes in 1968 when Houston, lead singer of the group Sweet Inspirations, is on the verge of making it big. But she increasingly fears that the quest for success is forcing her to spend too much time away from her children and her church. And in one dramatic moment, she decides that she can't continue to put her ambitions first.

Though this is Cissy's story, Whitney is heard from. She writes a (very funny) forward to the book and appears on the back of the dust jacket, no doubt at the behest of some publishing company marketing guru who thought the daughter could help sell mother's book. Mother also tells of daughter's precociousness from an early age, her early quest for stardom -- and her battles with outrageous fiction in the tabloids.

The material in this autobiography (written with Jonathan Singer) is rich. Unfortunately, what leaves a bit to be desired is its execution into book form.

The book uses a stream-of-consciousness technique, which reads more like a transcription of somebody talking into a tape recorder than sitting down and organizing their thoughts on the written page. That would be fine if it were well edited. But as it is, the narrative gets very repetitive, the details become a jumble and the chronology of events is sometimes difficult to decipher.

Every so often, the book also switches from Houston's voice to quote someone else, who then proceeds to refer to her in the third person, as if interviews by some third party were simply being inserted into Houston's own narrative without much care. The effect is rather jarring.

But the biggest problem with this book is the fault of neither Houston nor Singer -- it's a flaw inherent in the form. For this book is, at its heart, about music. And seeing lyrics written down on the page, no matter how poetic they might be, just isn't a sufficient substitute for hearing Cissy Houston sing them.

This reviewer's advice: Read the book, then go down to the music store and head for the gospel section, under "H." Then you'll have a fuller portrait of Cissy Houston.