‘Whitney Houston gave us something to believe in’: Jazz singer Nicole Henry brings unifying soundtrack to Broward Center
Like many women of Generation X, singer Nicole Henry came of age with the songs of Whitney Houston, the pop-music ingenue whose beauty and dynamic voice made her a transformative star beginning in the mid-1980s.
In the dozen years since her death, Houston has become even more of an enigma, and even more beloved, as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, as a sad cautionary tale and as the author of an enduring moment of pop-culture patriotism with her Super Bowl rendition of the National Anthem.
It is a personal and cultural connection Henry feels toward Houston and her music that she will explore in the one-woman show “I Wanna Dance with Somebody: The Songs of Whitney Houston” at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday, March 7.
The Miami Beach resident calls it a “theatrical tribute concert” that explores how Houston’s songs have expressed the hopes of many young women.
“It’s about how Whitney Houston’s music parallels my life,” says Henry, 49. “In so many Whitney Houston songs, people gained strength from them and understood more of themselves.”
The show, developed with New York-based theater director Will Nunziata, features a half-dozen Houston songs performed in their entirety, with many more referenced in varying lengths. Henry will be backed by Pete Wallace (piano), Dwayne Bennett (bass), David Chiverton (drums), Doug Emery (keyboards), LeNora Jaye and Tre Henderson (background vocals).
A singer of international renown — she has been a headliner at leading venues such as the Blue Note, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Feinstein’s, Jazz St. Louis and the Madrid Jazz Festival — Henry’s recordings have been lauded in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, JazzTimes and Essence magazine.
Henry’s most recent album is the excellent “Time to Love Again” (Banister Records), which remagines songs by James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Anthony Newley, Rodgers & Hart, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joan Armatrading, among others.
Like Houston, the daughter of Grammy-winning soul and gospel artist Cissy Houston, Henry grew up singing in the church choir. Living in suburban Philadelphia, Henry was 11 when a music-savvy uncle introduced her to Whitney Houston’s eponymous 1985 debut album.
Under the guidance of legendary producer Clive Davis, who saw in Houston a potential crossover star, the record was buffed and polished to a high sheen. “Whitney Houston” was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy Award and produced three No. 1 Billboard singles — “Greatest Love of All,” “Saving All My Love for You” and “How Will I Know.”
The bouncy video for “How Will I Know” was a staple on MTV, where Black artists were few.
Her 1987 follow-up album, “Whitney,” produced four singles that hit No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go.”
The next year, she was booed at the Soul Train Music Awards.
“Black people who wanted to have something to say at that time, used to say she’s not Black enough,” Henry says. “I say this from a Black person’s perspective. Particularly in the ’70s and ’80s, if you were not Black enough, you got shunned. Because you were trading … You were trying to be white, you know?”
“There was nothing about her that wasn’t rooted in Black family, Black life, Black church.”
Henry says gender also played a role at a time when Prince and Michael Jackson were in their pop-music prime.
“She was a young Black woman who was aware of what Black was,” Henry says. “There was nothing about her that wasn’t rooted in Black family, Black life, Black church.”
Henry says she was not immune to the side-eye from fellow students who did not consider her sufficiently Black at Bensalem High School, where she played the cello, was class president, a member of the competitive cheerleading squad, and won the school talent competition every year, singing Whitney Houston songs.
“My mom raised me well enough that, fortunately, I was that person that didn’t really care. It didn’t bother me. I was friends with everybody,” she says. “I was friends with the skater kids, but I also was part of Black organizations. I always liked being with all kinds of people and really acknowledging all kinds of people.”
Henry was 16 when Whitney Houston delivered her legendary rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before the 1991 Super Bowl. Against the unfolding backdrop of the first Iraq War, Houston’s pre-recorded National Anthem was stunning and soaring, patriotic and personal, and instantly became a pop-culture moment that is still being analyzed decades later.
It was around that time that Henry became the go-to singer of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before games and other events at her high school.
“Once it happened once, it happened every time,” she says. “Every football game, I think, from 10th grade on, and every basketball game, Nicole Henry was singing the National Anthem.”
While no one ever put it in such terms, if the school had been looking for a singer to recreate Houston’s iconic moment, it would be hard to find a better match than Henry, who has been told over the years that she bears a resemblance to Houston.
“I never thought about it before, but I was a very all-American Black student. I was the first Black homecoming queen at the school, one of the first Black high school presidents. … So I did kind of represent what Whitney was to America, in a way. She was that crossover artist. For my little town of Bensalem Township, yes, I guess I was that,” Henry says.
Henry says her show at the Broward Center leans into the feeling that Houston’s “Star-Spangled Banner” may have inspired.
“The general feeling of hope, it’s throughout the show,” Henry says. “Whitney Houston gave us something to believe in. That we can come together and pull it together. She did somehow represent the possible beauty that we can all share.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Nicole Henry presents “I Wanna Dance with Somebody: The Songs of Whitney Houston”
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 7
WHERE: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
COST: Tickets start at $49.50+
INFORMATION: BrowardCenter.org
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at [email protected] . Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell and Twitter @BenCrandell .