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• Houston family moved by tributes

Newark - At the New Jersey church where her singing career first took flight, fans and admirers gathered on Sunday to celebrate the life of Whitney Houston and mourn her passing a day after the pop music diva died in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Cards and flowers were tied to the railings of the New Hope Baptist Church, and congregants hugged and cried at the entrance. Among those paying their respects was the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the civil rights activist.

“The suddenness of it all leaves us traumatised,” said Jackson, who watched Houston grow up and sing at New Hope. It was this large but modest looking, red-brick house of worship on a quiet backstreet near downtown Newark where Houston's career began as a soloist in a gospel choir in the 1970s.

“We must lean on our faith. Our hearts are heavy today,” Jackson said.

Houston, whose soaring voice lifted her to the top of the pop music world but whose personal decline was fuelled by years of drug use, died on Saturday afternoon in a Beverly Hills hotel room. She was 48.

Several cards left at the church extolled Houston's roots in Newark, where she was born in 1963. One read: “Newark loves you and will always love you.”

“We are all heartbroken,” said Jacqueline Kimble, 45, who has been coming to the church all her life and remembers Houston there. “She was our jewel. This is a sad day for Newark and the whole world.”

“This is a very sad day,” said Cynthia Williams, 47, who attended early morning worship at New Hope, held in memory of Houston. “It is a great loss to Newark.”

Up to 200 people attended the Newark church's three scheduled services, portions of which were devoted to Houston and her family.

“We prayed for the family, “ said Denise Dean, 57, who attended one of the services. Dean once heard Houston sing at the church and still has her faded autograph on an old cheque book.

Donna Thorn, who described herself as an ex-drug addict and Newark resident, placed flowers outside the church.”You can't mistake her voice for anything else,” she said, crying.

On Houston's drug problems, Thorn said: “With that fast-track life in LA, everything is handed to you. You don't know what it's like until you've been there. You have to live with it and try to beat it.”

“At the blink of an eye, things happen,” Thorn said.

Houston died on the eve of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles at the same hotel where her mentor, record mogul Clive Davis, was holding a pre-event party with music industry celebrities.

Beverly Hills police said they were called to the hotel where Houston's body was found in a fourth-floor room. Police said there were no obvious signs of criminal intent.

Los Angeles County coroners removed Houston's body after midnight through a back door to avoid the crush of media set up to cover her death.

Typically, coroners conduct an autopsy within a day or two, at which point they might release some preliminary information about the death. If drugs or alcohol are involved, however, an official cause of death would not be released until after toxicology tests, which could take six to eight weeks.

Los Angeles police and coroners officials offered no update early on Sunday.

Houston's death is now expected to be a central focus of Sunday night's Grammys, and Jennifer Hudson is scheduled to sing a tribute during the programme.

Houston's songs were already dominating Internet music sales early on Sunday. Her album Whitney Houston - The Greatest Hits was the top seller in the music category on Amazon.com and her signature hit, I Will Always Love You, was the No. 1 download at iTunes.

Over the course of a 30-year career in which she established herself as one of the most-admired and influential singers of her time, Houston won six Grammys, 30 Billboard awards and 22 American Music Awards.

The soundtrack for the hit movie in which she starred, The Bodyguard, was among the best-selling soundtracks in movie history.

By the early 1990s, Houston's success on stage was accompanied by an increasingly troubled personal life. In 1992 she married singer Bobby Brown and their tumultuous 14 years together were marred by drug abuse and domestic violence.

The last 10 years of Houston's life were dominated by drug use, rumours of relapses and trips to rehab. - Reuters