Gary Catona became Whitney Houston’s vocal coach seven years ago thanks to Stevie Wonder. During an interview he spoke of times when her voice reached incredible heights but that she could no longer maintain it. Her ‘extracurricular’ activities had taken an incredible toll on her speaking and singing voice. The Daily Mail reports that Catona blamed the damage drug use has on vocal tissue for the demise of Whitney’s voice.
Whitney Houston didn’t have a single note in her lower register when Stevie Wonder introduced her to voice coach Gary Catona seven years ago.
‘Her speaking and singing voice were completely hoarse,’ he told me, when we spoke this week about the singer’s untimely death. ‘At her best, she had a three-and-a-half octave range.’
At certain moments during their lessons, he recalled, his former pupil managed to reach incredible vocal heights — but she couldn’t sustain them.
‘She had demons in her,’ Catona told me sadly. ‘She was many people in one, and it was a question of which one would appear — and when.’
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