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Jennifer Hudson, Usher sing Whitney Houston's praises

Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
Yolanda Adams and Cece Winans look up to an image of singer Whitney Houston after their performance onstage at 'We Will Always Love You: A Grammy Salute to Whitney Houston' in Los Angeles.
  • Jennifer Hudson's uptempo dance medley gets tribute show off to a joyous start
  • "Count on Me' by CeCe Winans and Yolanda Adams leaves many in tears
  • Hour-long "Grammy Salute to Whitney' airs 10 p.m. ET/PT Nov. 16 on CBS

LOS ANGELES -- It started with a dance party and ended with tears, fitting bookends on a night devoted to the memory of Whitney Houston.

Thursday's taping of a CBS special at the Nokia Theatre took the late superstar's fans and peers on a nostalgic journey with live performances, testimonials, rare video and family snapshots.

The hour-long tribute, We Will Always Love You: A Grammy Salute to Whitney Houston, airs at 10 p.m. Nov. 16 ET/PT.

Jennifer Hudson, sporting big hair in homage to one of Houston's video looks in the '80s, opened the show with an upbeat medley of I'm Every Woman, How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Usher, who performed I Believe in You and Me from The Preacher's Wife soundtrack, said Houston possessed "one of the greatest voices we have heard in this lifetime. I will never forget her."

CeCe Winans and Yolanda Adams closed the event with a soaring version of Waiting to Exhale's Count on Me, leaving many audience members weeping. Unable to attend, Celine Dion will record The Greatest Love of All in Canada, and the segment will be intercut with a version she sang in 1987, which was shown in her absence.

The program was a clip-heavy affair, but, wow, what flashbacks. Rare footage included Houston's TV debut on The Merv Griffin Show, where her mother can be seen through the translucent curtain frantically directing the band to quicken the tempo.

None of Houston's sordid chapters were referenced, in keeping with the special's mission to celebrate her career achievements.

"I'd feel much better if she were here in front of all of you," said executive producer Ken Ehrlich, who recalled the difficulty of staging the Grammy Awards in February the day after Houston's death. "We are still mourning, but tonight we have chosen to look at the great work she has left us."

She's seen singing the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl and turning in a smashing version of I Will Always Love You on the Grammy Awards.

The singer, who died at 48 of accidental drowning complicated by drug use and heart disease, was exalted by LL Cool J, Tariji P. Henson and longtime mentor Clive Davis, who sat in the audience with Houston's daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown and her fiancé Nick Gordon.

Britney Spears spoke about annoying her little brother with her versions of Houston's songs, including I Have Nothing, the cover that won her a record deal.

Houston also swayed a young Halle Berry.

"She inspired a generation of little girls and women to believe in their own dreams and to know that they had within themselves the greatest gift of all," the actress said. "I was one of those little girls who then became a woman who never ever, ever, stopped loving Whitney Houston."

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