CeCe Winan's from-the-heart success

NEW YORK - Gospel singer CeCe Winans can certainly count her blessings.

The seven-time Grammy winner is up for another one (contemporary soul gospel album) for Alone in His Presence, her first solo effort. She'll perform on Wednesday's show with Whitney Houston.

Count on Me, her duet with Houston from the hot-selling Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, Billboard's No. 3 pop album, has just been released as a single. Their video airs on VH1.

She also is up for six Dove gospel awards April 25 and will continue to appear in Crest toothpaste commercials on TV. And she'll star in her first play, Born to Sing? Mama I Want to Sing - Part 3, playing Friday through March 10 at the Paramount Theater in New York's Madison Square Garden.

The play's title couldn't be more appropriate.

"God has been good," says Winans, 31, relaxing on the couch in a brownstone-turned-rehearsal hall.

"The album is doing well, I guess, because I did one that the Lord put in my heart," she says. "Very simple. I didn't want it real slick."

Alone contains old hymns and traditional ballads, a far cry from the slick R&B-oriented gospel records she has done with brother BeBe.

"The message of the whole album (is) to get alone in His presence, to calm down, chill out and focus on what's really important," she says.

"I didn't know if the young people would embrace it. Then my little daughter Ashley told me that one of the kids in the church said, 'Ow, I love your mother's album. It gives me peace when my brother gets on my nerves.' I died laughing. This is an 8- or 9-year-old."

But she's not laughing about rumors that she and BeBe had dissolved their award-winning duo, which has two gold albums (Heaven, Relationships) and the million-seller Different Lifestyles to its credit.

"We are still a duo, and we'll probably be back in the studio maybe next year," she insists. "We just wanted to establish ourselves as individuals."

Meanwhile she's been recording with Houston.

"They needed another song for Exhale, so Whitney called and asked me to do the duet."

Her song with Houston will be one of the rare times the Grammys features a gospel performance. She and Houston had done a similar duet of Bridge Over Troubled Waters for the VH1 awards show.

"We just had a good time," says Winans. "Since we did that, a lot of people have been requesting to try to recapture that same thing."

She says Count on Me reflects her and Houston's deepening friendship. They first met at the NAACP Image Awards show in 1987. "She told us how much she enjoyed our music," Winans recalls.

"I was surprised. I told her how great I thought she was. She has an incredible voice. We just talked, and she asked if we were performing anywhere. We were doing a late show that night. . . . She showed up that night and ended up onstage with us and was like wearing our songs out."

Winans says working solo is a different experience and is also harder than it seems.

"When you're doing a duet, it's less work. I've been doing a lot of performances that are intimate," she says of her church tours.

She's looking forward to playing Born to Sing's Doris Winter (based on real-life singer Doris Troy, who sang the 1963 hit Just One Look).

"I'm singing, and then I'm acting and then singing again. It's wearing me out. But I love it."

She plans another solo album by the end of the year.

"I think I'll stay in the same vein" as Alone, she says. "It gets me a chance to express myself in a different way than from BeBe and CeCe. I don't want to compete with BeBe and CeCe."