The best thing about the Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards, where they present Lifetime Achievement Awards and other career-spanning honors, is the warm way recipients reach across genres and generations to recognize each other. That's what happened when the 2024 honors were presented on Saturday (February 3) at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.
Trustees Award-winning hip-hop innovator DJ Kool Herc spied honoree Gladys Knight in the front row and said of 'Midnight Train to Georgia,' the 1973 classic with the Pips – “now, that's the flow “.
Ice Cube also praised Knight and gospel group The Clark Sisters in his remarks, in which NWA received a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“We knew when we started making music in 1985/1986 that a Grammy wasn't in the cards for the kind of music we were making, and we were cool with that. We can't sing like Gladys or hold a note like The Clark Sisters. We wanted to understand the world around us, Long Beach, Compton, Watts.
He noted that when the NWA started they had their strip all to themselves. “We didn't think the whole world would do it. We thought it was ours. What it showed was that when you do your thing, the world will come to you and you don't have to go to the world.”
NWA is the fifth rap group to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in the past eight years, following Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five and Salt-N-Pepa. (Additionally, Slick Rick, who rose to prominence in Doug E. Fresh & the Get Fresh Crew, was honored in his own right last year.)
Welcoming the audience to the Special Merit Awards, Ruby Marchand, the Academy's Chief Awards and Industry Officer, said: “This ceremony is the highlight of Grammy Week, so heartwarming.” That's the right word for it. Especially since the Grammy Awards scaled to arenas in 1997, when they were first held at New York's Madison Square Garden, the Special Merit Awards are considered the warmest, most intimate show, with good vibes all around. Perhaps because it's not a competition, and because these recognitions usually come late in the honorees' careers, when they're in a reflective mood.
Four of the honors were presented posthumously – Lifetime Achievement Awards to Donna Summer, Tammy Wynette, NWA's Eazy-E and a Technical Grammy Award to sound engineer Tom Kobayashi. In addition, attorney Joel Katz, who received the Trustees Award, “[is] dealing with his health concerns,” according to fellow attorney Jason M. Karlov, who accepted for him.
Dr. Dre, who was honored as a member of NWA sent a text message, which was read by Harvey Mason, jr. CEO of the Recording Academy, in which he explained that the ceremony took place on his daughter's birthday and put family first, but still said, “It's an honor to receive this award with my NWA brothers.”
Two well-chosen guest artists presented segments. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, who had a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996 with “Tha Crossroads,” a tribute to Eazy-E, presented the award to NWA The members said NWA “changed music , the culture and America forever.” And Shelby Lynne presented the award to one of her idols, Wynette. Lynne also sang a good part of Wynette's “Stand By Your Man,” which she rightly called “a country classic for the ages.”
Wynette's award was accepted by Tamala Jones, her daughter by George Jones. The daughter credited the Showtime miniseries George & Tammy because it was a factor that may have helped Wynette, who died in 1998, finally receive this award. George Jones received the honor in 2012.
Bruce Sudano, who was married to Summer for more than 30 years, received Summer's Lifetime Achievement Award, along with their daughters Mimi, Brooklyn and Amanda. He said the phone call notifying him of the award caused “emotions that I did not expect. My body filled with pure joy, connected to a tear in my eye. It is gratifying to us that, more than 10 years after her death, her voice and music are still omnipresent in the zeitgeist.”
Among others, she credited Universal Music Group and Warner Chappell for finding creative ways to keep her music alive. “I'm grateful that he continues to inspire new fans, [whether newcomers or] beautiful Beyoncé and her summer Renaissance.”
Summer's segment ended when daughter Mimi sang some ethereal lines from Summer's 1977 dance/electronic classic “I Feel Love.”
Summer was the first female artist to win Grammy Awards in four different genres: R&B (“Last Dance”), rock (“Hot Stuff”), inspirational (“He's a Rebel” and “Forgive Me”) and dance (“Carry On” “).
Knight spoke emotionally about the family while accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award. She noted that her mother would never allow her to sing “easily”. It had to come from a deeper place. All credit, then, to her mother Gladys Knight for encouraging her daughter to find the perfect combination of “pain and glory” that has always been her trademark.
In 1974, Gladys Knight & the Pips became the first group to win Grammys in both the pop and R&B categories on the same night.
Laurie Anderson accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award with an eloquent speech. “I make music that doesn't have an apt name,” he said. “Multimedia is what I dislike the least. “Experimental” sounds like I'm making things in a lab that might explode.”
She also listed three rules to live by that she and her late husband, Lou Reed, came up with.
“1) Fear no one. 2) Get a really good bullshit detector. 3) Be truly tender.”
Anderson could win a competitive Grammy on Sunday, a day after accepting that honor. It is nominated for best historical album Words & Music, May 1965 (Deluxe Edition). Anderson is one of two of this year's Special Merit honorees who are current Grammy nominees. Karen Clark-Sheard of The Clark Sisters is nominated for Best Gospel Performance/Song for “God Is Good.”
Peter Asher, who received the Trustees' award, had scanned the list of previous recipients of this award and said he found it “intimidating”. Citing in particular the Beatles, Mo Ostin, Ahmet Ertegun, Sir George Martin, Lou Adler, Carole King and Clive Davis, he said “the phrase 'We are not worthy' comes to mind when I receive this award.” .
In a video setting up the presentation, the Grammys reached back to a clip from the 1990 telecast where Asher won producer of the year, non-classical for the second time. “I would like to thank the artists I worked with,” he said. “They could have easily made the records without me, but I certainly couldn't have made them without them.”
There were moments of humor in the process. Sound engineer Tom Scott, who received a Technical Grammy Award alongside his late partner Tom Kobayashi, was forced to ruefully admit that even he sometimes has technical problems. “I had this [acceptance speech] on my mobile, but it's in a little red zone that says it's 5% power, so I had to go back to analog,” he said, as he pulled out a hard copy of his observations to read.
Jason M. Karlov, an attorney at Katz's law firm, Barnes + Thornburg, said this while accepting Katz's Trustees Award, which is generally given to non-executives. “I've heard the Trustees Awards aren't for shows, but if you've ever met Joel, it's a show.”
Karlov also said that Katz feels “his proudest work is his 41 years of service on behalf of the Academy.” As outside general counsel for the Recording Academy, Katz is credited with leading negotiations for the Grammys' 10-year, $500 million deal with CBS in 2016. (The Academy has honored a handful of Grammy members with Trustees Awards over the years , including Christine Farnon, the Academy's first full-time employee, Pierre Cossette, who helped turn the Grammys into a live telecast, Walter C. Miller, the show's longtime director, and Ken Ehrlich, who produced or executive producer of the TV show for 40 years.)
K'naan's “Refugee” was the best song for the social change award. This award, now in its second year, honors the songwriter or songwriters of message-based music that speaks to the social issues of our time and has demonstrated and inspired positive global impact.
“Refugee,” which K'naan co-wrote with Steve McEwan and Gerald Eaton, serves as a tribute to refugees around the world. K'naan, 45, was nominated in a related category, best video with a message, at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards for “Is Anybody Out There?”, a collaboration with Nelly Furtado.
Annie Ray of Annandale High School in Annandale, Virginia, received the 2024 Music Educator Award presented by the Recording Academy and the Grammy Museum. Ray serves as both band director and chair of the performing arts department at Annandale High School in the Fairfax County Public School System (FCPS). “Orchestra is so much more than a classroom – it's a second family,” Ray said.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/2024-special-merit-awards-recording-academy-grammy-lifetime-achievement-awards-gladys-knight-n-w-a-1235597477/