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Jennifer Hudson, Celine Dion honor Whitney Houston

It starts with a dance party and ends with tears, fitting bookends on a night devoted to the memory of Whitney Houston.

We Will Always Love You: A Grammy Salute to Whitney Houston (CBS, 10 ET/PT Friday) takes the late singer's fans, peers and admirers on a nostalgic journey via live performances, testimonials, rare video and family snapshots.

The hour-long special, taped last month in front of a live audience at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, kicks off with Jennifer Hudson (sporting big hair in homage to one of Houston's video looks in the '80s) charging through an upbeat medley of I'm Every Woman, How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Usher tackles I Believe in You and Me from The Preacher's Wife soundtrack, and Celine Dion's The Greatest Love of All is intercut with clips of a version Dion sang in 1987.

CeCe Winans and Yolanda Adams close the hour-long special with a soaring rendition of Waiting to Exhale's Count on Me, which left many audience members weeping.

Rare footage includes 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 are referenced, in keeping with the tribute's mission to celebrate her career achievements. Instead, video flashbacks find her belting the National Anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl and nailing I Will Always Love You on 1994's Grammy Awards.

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

Lifelong fan Halle Berry tells the crowd, "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. I was one of those little girls who then became a woman who never ever, ever, stopped loving Whitney Houston."

Edited by PurpleHaze - Nov 16 2012 at 4:30pm

I'll be watching tonight R.I.P Whitney

seeing JHud in that oufit reminds me of how lean Whitney really was...i thought JHud was skinny but seeing her play Whitney makes her look bigger again.  I wonder how Brandy feels being left out of the performance?  I can't wait to see what little Herve Leger frock Bobbi Kristina tries to squeeze into.  Anyway, I love Whitney and can't wait.

WHAT CHANNEL??