NASHVILLE, Tenn. -
Nashville-based Grammy Award winning gospel singer and songwriter Reba Rambo-McGuire learned of Whitney Houston's sudden death Saturday evening via text message from a member of Houston's entourage.
The text message stated, "Whitney's gone."
Sunday, Rambo-McGuire called her death a "raw wound."
She Nashville's News 2, "It's so hard to even talk about but I have chosen to think about the life within [Houston's] life, and she lived life."
With Houston's roots in gospel music, it was that similar passion that connected Houston and Rambo-McGuire's mother, renowned gospel singer and songwriter Dottie Rambo
"Mother didn't listen to a lot of music in her home really, she just didn't, but you would go in and she would have Whitney playing," Rambo-McGuire told Nashville's News 2.
She recalled one of her mother's greatest accomplishments, having Houston record her song "I Go to the Rock" for the 1996 movie, "The Preacher's Wife."
"Of all the cuts, mother had Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, all these different people that have recorded her music, that cut [I Go to the Rock] really meant so much to mom because she felt it was authentic," said Rambo-McGuire.
The track garnered Rambo and Houston a Gospel Music Association Dove Award in 1998. Houston even performed at the awards show in a rare Nashville appearance.
Despite the singer's talent it was the person behind the famous voice Rambo-McGuire remembers most fondly.
She said, "I remember the one time we were backstage and she grabbed my hands and said, ‘And how are you?' and the way she looked at you with those eyes, she looked right through you and I thought you really care," Rambo-McGuire said.
Rambo-McGuire also remembers the charismatic greetings Houston would always offer.
"Most of the time when she'd see me, she would go, "I Go to the Rock" and that would be her opening ‘Hey, how you doing girl?' She would start singing a Christian song or one of mother's songs or one of my songs," Rambo-McGuire continues.
Rambo-McGuire hopes fans will remember Houston as she does despite her recent public struggle with substance abuse.
"She lived and she loved in such a big way, such a big way and she will never be forgotten," she said.
Dottie Rambo was killed tragically in a bus accident in 2008.
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