The orchestra was in the midst of recording when Minor said he was told he had a phone call. “Sometimes, when you’re introduced to something new, you don’t like it or love it. Sure enough, the NFL, ABC, even Houston’s own father, John, who was her manager -– everyone wanted Houston to sing the anthem the way it had always been done. When Houston and Minor first talked about the anthem, she mentioned how much she’d loved Marvin Gaye’s performance at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, a leisurely but luxurious version backed by a drum kit.

Given Roseanne Barr’s debacle the previous summer, when she had screeched her way through The Star-Spangled Banner before a Major League Baseball game, the NFL was particularly concerned that there be nothing out of the ordinary about Houston’s performance of the national anthem. The NFL also was leery of doing anything that might appear disrespectful of American troops or make it seem as if the league were not showing appropriate seriousness for this moment in history. Bush insisted the game between the Buffalo Bills and New York Giants go ahead. Some had even questioned the appropriateness of playing the Super Bowl with Americans in harm’s way, but President George H.W. The first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, had begun just 10 days earlier, and tensions were high throughout the country. But you have to remember the circumstances at the time, said Rickey Minor, Houston’s longtime musical director. “We’d gotten the tape of it, and there were people in the league who didn’t think it was appropriate,” said Jim Steeg, who, as the NFL’s longtime senior vice president of special events, was responsible for planning the Super Bowl. Thirty years later, Whitney Houston’s performance of the national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl remains iconic, the standard by which all other renditions are measured – usually to their detriment.

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