Bermudian chart star Rochelle Simons shocked by Whitney Houston’s death

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The death of pop queen Whitney Houston has pierced a gaping hole in the heart of former R&B singer Rochelle Simons.

Like many the world over, Ms Simons was crushed by the superstar’s death an event she has yet to fully fathom.

“I am just totally devastated and still in shock,” said the Bermudian singer whose single ‘My Magic Man’ topped the British music charts and reached number 11 on the New York Billboard charts in the early 1980s.

Ms Houston, 48, was found unresponsive in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel last Saturday. The cause of the multiple Grammy Award winner’s death has yet to be determined.

Ms Simons, who was signed by Warner Brothers in the 1980s, learned of the death via a long-distance call from her sister Mary.

“I couldn’t believe it, my heart just melted,” she recalled. “I was so devastated that I couldn’t even go to sleep.”

Ms Simons, whose singing talents were first discovered by long-time Royal Gazette employee and former Upper Room Quintette singer Jean-Ann McConnie, rates Ms Houston as one of the world’s greats.

“She was like the best singer of all time and no one can ever fill her shoes,” she said. “It’s a huge, huge loss and I am probably one of her biggest fans.”

Ms Simons never had the opportunity to meet the late singing great. However, she did get to meet her mother Cissy at a gospel concert in Harlem, New York.

“I attended this gospel concert and Cissy Houston was there and I got to sit down and actually talk to her and I was so excited,” she recalled. “Whitney was out of town at the time, but I learned a good bit about her through her mom.”

There has been much media speculation over the circumstances surrounding the singer’s death her long battle with drug and alcohol addiction was well known.

Yet rather than dwell on the singer’s gradual fall from grace, Ms Simons prefers to remember her in a more positive light.

“I can’t even watch television anymore because I think people are being so insensitive to the fact she’s gone,” she added. “They don’t even know why or how she died and just to put judgement on her in so insensitive.”

Much of Ms Houston’s offstage troubles have been blamed on her tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown. However, Ms Simons believes there’s much more to the iconic singer’s decline than her relationship with the father of her only child, Bobbi Kristina.

“People can point fingers and blame Bobby and all, but it’s not about that at all,” she said. “What I think happened to Whitney where she down-spiralled was the fact she couldn’t sing anymore. Here’s this person that had this voice like an angel and all of a sudden she couldn’t use it anymore. I think that’s what destroyed her more than anything.”

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