New speculation has arose following the absence of Aretha Franklin at Whitney Houston’s funeral on Sat. Feb 18th.
Franklin, the godmother of Houston and close friend of Cissy Houston was originally scheduled to perform for the music legend but she cancelled at a last minute’s notice.
The uproar from this story comes recently after videos and photo’s leaked the internet showing Franklin performing at her later scheduled show at Radio City Music Hall in New York city. Franklin acknowledged her absence to leg spasms at her show.
Regretfully, I am so sorry that I was unable to be with you at Whitney’s service today. I had every intention of being there. But unfortunately I had terrible leg spasms and locked leg muscles until 4:00AM this morning following my concert last night, which I’ve been having for the last few days. I feel it necessary and very important to stay off my leg today as much as possible until concert time this evening. My heart goes out to my dear friend Cissy, Dionne, Bobbi Kristina and the rest of the family. May God keep them all.
Franklin later said:
She was a very fine young lady” and “one of the best, greatest singers,” said Franklin, breaking back and forth between melody and spoken word, behind song and sermon.
She was giving, gave so much of herself.
God bless you, Nippy,” she concluded. “We’ll always remember.
Watch the performance here:
Well rumor now has it that Franklin was originally invited to Whitney’s funeral but Cissy later disinvited Franklin after a comment that Franklin made on ‘The Today Show’ earlier in the week where Franklin blame part of Houston’s upbringing to her troubles with drug addiction. Cissy allegedly felt insulted and offended by the remark as she wanted no one to mention or speak of her daughter’s past demon’s.
The interview has been removed from the internet and now only and edited portion of Franklin’s interview remains where she describes how she learned of Whitney’s death and her feelings thereof.
I really hope this is yet a rumor because they have been friends for a well over two decades and it would be truly sad to see their friendship go a stray especially at the result of Whitney’s untimely death.