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“The Star-Spangled Banner” is known to be one of the most difficult songs for performers to hear, which is ironic since it was written so that every citizen of the United States could sing it. Its wide range has often provided some of the funniest performances ever created on a basketball or football field, from Fergie to Roseanne. To this day, the national anthem, written by Francis Scott Key and John Stafford Smith, can be difficult to do, even for the most trained star.
But then there was Whitney Houston.
In 1991, the then-27-year-old singer set the gold standard with her performance at Super Bowl 25 on January 27. She was at the peak of her music career, having released three hit studio albums in the five years leading up to her entry. on the football field. The country had just entered the Persian Gulf War and there was a sense of deep patriotism in the air when she performed, which her rendition confirmed to the nth degree.
“If you were there you could feel the intensity,” said Houston, who died in 2012, in an interview for the accompanying DVD to her hit album in 2000. “We were in the war of Gulf at the time. It was an intense time for our country. Many of our daughters and sons were fighting abroad. I could see in the stadium, I could see the fear, the hope, the intensity, the prayers rising.
“It was hope, we needed hope, you know, to bring our babies home and that’s what it was for me. This is how I felt singing this song, and the overwhelming love that came out of the stands was incredible.
Thirty years later, TODAY got the chance to interview Rickey Minor, longtime Houston musical director, who coordinated this incredible performance.
“It’s easier to stay with the status quo”
“I’m a fan of never looking back, but then this thing shows up,” Minor, 61, told TODAY. “And we’re back. I feel like the guy from “Back to the Future”. But I love it, and what I really, really love… I really appreciate all the love Whitney gets. I feel like the clouds are opening and she is looking forward to her job and her commitment to doing the best job every time.
Minor joined the group from Houston in 1986 and soon after became the band’s musical director, since that time he has worked with many other great record artists including Ray Charles, Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera and Alicia Keys. He also replaced Kevin Eubanks as conductor of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in 2010, and worked as a musical director for nine seasons on “American Idol”. Despite all of these esteemed credits, the Emmy winner is best known for his working relationship with Houston.
At the time of the national anthem, Minor said, “Whitney was in a very creative place, a very open place.
“Her album had just come out, she had been on a world tour, she had just done a screen test for ‘The Bodyguard’ and we were busy,” he recalls. “She was at her best vocally, for sure, because we were working all the time. So this muscle was being used, but she had innate it. It’s crazy to think that a person with a voice like that never really warmed up because they were always singing. It’s amazing that she was able to do whatever she wanted with her instrument. She had total control.
Not only was the deep Houston instrument on display that Super Bowl day, but also the actual arrangement of the song which was quite original. This orchestration was something that leaders of the NFL, CBS, and the orchestra pushed back in the days leading up to the big game.
“Change is one of the most constant things that happens, but we resist something that is foreign to us,” Minor said. “It was done in exactly the same way. All the orchestras in the United States can play it by heart, they don’t need music because it’s the same arrangement that is played everywhere. We were crying to hear a different interpretation of it, yet it’s fear, fear of the unknown, fear of what if they don’t like it? It’s easier to stay with the status quo. “
But this status quo is what Houston wanted to change.
The national anthem is in a waltz tempo with three single bar beats, every three beats a new bar arrives. In 1983, a year before his death, Marvin Gaye performed a calming rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” during an NBA All Star game. “Marvin used a drum machine that made four, four,” Minor said. “And so that was one of the things Whitney really liked about it. She asked: ‘Is it possible that we could have a little more time like him?’
This change in tempo made a substantial difference, as did some of the other style changes that added more elements of jazz and gospel to the arrangement created especially for her.
“John Clayton Jr. has really worked in the classical and jazz world, with a lot of arrangements for Quincy (Jones) and for symphonies,” Minor explained. “He was my bass teacher when I went to college, so it was a relationship that we could work closely together. It’s about setting the mood, so we talked about those things that we wanted to give her.
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