Biography
At the age of five, Emily Drinkard—who would later answer to Cissy Houston—entered the Drinkard Four, a family gospel ensemble already featuring her sister Anne along with brothers Nicholas and Larry. Lee, another sister who managed the act, would eventually give birth to the soulful pop vocalist Dee Dee Warwick and to Dionne Warwick. When vocalists Ann Moss and Marie Epps joined, the ensemble adopted the name Drinkard Singers and began appearing regularly at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church. There they cut singles for Savoy, Chess, and Verve, and taped the live RCA album A Joyful Noise. In the early 1950s they became the first gospel group to share a stage with Mahalia Jackson, an occasion that arose at the National Baptist Convention. Their devotional harmonies stirred the audience at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, prompting RCA to sign them—the first gospel act the label ever contracted.
Nitch Drinkard, father of the four original members and a Newark factory worker, supplied the guiding force; with his wife Delia he raised eight children. Emily “Cissy” Drinkard later reflected in a late-1990s interview, “To my father, gospel singing was a ministry, there was a message in the music. He saw us as junior ambassadors—not just sowing the gospel but also reaping the blessing of singing God’s word in our own lives.”
Anne Drinkard, though she launched the Drinkard Ensemble in the late 1950s and inspired Alex Bradford’s play Your Arm’s Too Short To Box With God, eventually withdrew from concert work and recording to pursue a ministry of music. Married to Felix Moss in 1946 while still in high school, she was succeeded by Judy Guirons—later known as Judy Clay—who had been adopted as a teenager by Lee Drinkard.
Nitch Drinkard, father of the four original members and a Newark factory worker, supplied the guiding force; with his wife Delia he raised eight children. Emily “Cissy” Drinkard later reflected in a late-1990s interview, “To my father, gospel singing was a ministry, there was a message in the music. He saw us as junior ambassadors—not just sowing the gospel but also reaping the blessing of singing God’s word in our own lives.”
Anne Drinkard, though she launched the Drinkard Ensemble in the late 1950s and inspired Alex Bradford’s play Your Arm’s Too Short To Box With God, eventually withdrew from concert work and recording to pursue a ministry of music. Married to Felix Moss in 1946 while still in high school, she was succeeded by Judy Guirons—later known as Judy Clay—who had been adopted as a teenager by Lee Drinkard.