N.W.A, Laurie Anderson, Gladys Knight, Donna Summer season, Tammy Wynette and the Clark Sisters will obtain 2024 Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Awards throughout this yr’s Particular Advantage Awards ceremony, the Academy introduced at this time.
Additionally being honored are longtime Linda Ronstadt/ James Taylor producer/supervisor Peter Asher, hip-hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc and veteran lawyer (and longtime Academy govt) Joel Katz with Trustees Award recipients; Tom Kobayashi and Tom Scott with Technical Grammy Awards; and “Refugee,” written by Ok’naan, Steve McEwan, and Gerald Eaton (a.okay.a. Jarvis Church), is being honored with the Greatest Track for Social Change Award.
The Recording Academy’s Particular Advantage Awards Ceremony happen on Saturday, Feb. 3, on the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. (Summer season, Wynette and Kobayashi are being awarded posthumously.)
“The Academy is honored to pay tribute to this yr’s Particular Advantage Award recipients — a outstanding group of creators and business professionals whose affect resonates with generations worldwide,” stated Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy. “Their contributions to music span genres, backgrounds and crafts, reflecting the wealthy variety that fuels our artistic neighborhood. We look ahead to honoring these music business trailblazers subsequent month as a part of our week-long celebration main as much as Music’s Greatest Night time.”
The Recording Academy’s explanations of the artists and honors observe in full:
Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees: This Particular Advantage Award is offered by vote of the Recording Academy’s Nationwide Trustees to performers* who, throughout their lifetimes, have made artistic contributions of excellent creative significance to the sphere of recording. See previous recipients right here (*by 1972, recipients included non-performers).
Laurie Anderson is a author, director, composer, visible artist, musician, and vocalist who has created groundbreaking works that span the worlds of artwork, theater, experimental music, and expertise. As a performer and musician, she has collaborated with many individuals together with Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, William S. Burroughs, Peter Gabriel, Robert Wilson, Christian McBride, and Philip Glass. In 2002, Anderson was appointed the primary artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo efficiency, The Finish of the Moon. She has been nominated for six GRAMMY Awards® all through her recording profession and acquired a GRAMMY® for the discharge Landfall in collaboration with the Kronos Quartet on the 61st GRAMMYs®.
The Clark Sisters – an American gospel vocal group initially consisting of 5 sisters – Jacky, Denise, Elbernita, Dorinda, and Karen – have been taking the world by storm for the reason that early Eighties. Credited for serving to to carry gospel music to the mainstream, the Clark Sisters are thought of pioneers of latest gospel. Their greatest crossover hits embrace: “Is My Residing in Useless?,” “Hallelujah,” “He Gave Me Nothing to Lose,” “Endow Me,” their hit music “Jesus Is A Love Track,” “Pure Gold,” “Miracle,” and their largest, mainstream crossover gold-certified, “You Introduced The Sunshine.” The Clark Sisters (Jacky, Elbernita, Dorinda, and Karen) have received three GRAMMYs (two awarded to the group, and one to Karen as a songwriter for “Blessed and Extremely Favored”), and with 16 albums to their credit score and thousands and thousands in gross sales, they’re the highest-selling feminine gospel group in historical past.
Gladys Knight is a seven-time GRAMMY® Award winner who has loved No. 1 hits in pop, gospel, R&B, and grownup modern, and has triumphed in movie, tv and dwell efficiency. Knight has recorded greater than 38 albums over time together with 4 solo albums. She appeared on ABC’s 14th season of “Dancing With The Stars” in 2012, and in 2019, she competed on the inaugural season of “The Masked Singer.” Knight has sung the Nationwide Anthem at a number of main sporting occasions, together with at Tremendous Bowl LIII in Atlanta in 2019, and on the 2021 NBA All-Star Sport. She was a Nationwide Endowment for the Arts 2021 Nationwide Medal of Arts Recipient and acquired a Kennedy Heart Honor for Lifetime Inventive Achievements in 2022.
N.W.A was a rap group from the Compton district in Los Angeles who’re credited by many with inventing gangsta rap. The group, consisting of Eazy-E^, Dr. Dre, Ice Dice, DJ Yella, and MC-Ren, developed a brand new sound, which introduced in lots of the loud, excessive sonic improvements of Public Enemy whereas adopting a self-consciously violent and harmful lyrical stance. In 1988, N.W.A launched their album, Straight Outta Compton, a brutally intense document that grew to become an underground hit with none assist from radio or MTV. This adverse consideration labored of their favor because it introduced the album to multiplatinum standing. Though the group was short-lived, gangsta rap established itself as the most well-liked type of hip-hop in the course of the mid-Nineties.
Donna Summer season rocketed to worldwide superstardom along with her groundbreaking merger of R&B, soul, pop, funk, rock, disco, and avant-garde electronica, catapulting underground dance music out of the golf equipment of Europe and bringing it to the world. Summer season holds the document with three consecutive double albums to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts (the one solo artist to ever accomplish this), and first feminine artist to have 4 No. 1 singles in a 12-month interval on Billboard’s Sizzling 100 chart. A five-time GRAMMY winner and 18-time GRAMMY nominee, Summer season was the primary artist to win the GRAMMY for Greatest Rock Vocal Efficiency, Feminine (1979, “Sizzling Stuff”) in addition to the first-ever recipient of the brand new GRAMMY Class for Greatest Dance Recording (1997, “Carry On”). Summer season was the primary feminine artist to win GRAMMY Awards in 4 completely different genres: dance, gospel, rock, and R&B.
Tammy Wynette first hit the musical scene in 1966 with “Residence #9” after transferring to Nashville and teaming up with document producer Billy Sherrill. Collectively, the duo wrote songs that mirrored the yearnings and the issues Wynette felt have been necessary in her life. In 1968, Wynette launched “Stand By Your Man,” which offered greater than 5 million singles and have become the largest-selling single ever recorded by a feminine artist. By 1970, she racked up 5 No. 1 nation hits, was named the Nation Music Affiliation’s Feminine Vocalist of the Yr 3 times, and received two GRAMMYs. Wynette was the primary feminine nation music singer to promote over a million albums and has offered greater than 30 million data grossing greater than $100 million, incomes her the title “The First Girl of Nation Music.”
Trustees Award Honorees: This Particular Advantage Award is offered by vote of the Recording Academy’s Nationwide Trustees to people who, throughout their careers in music, have made vital contributions, apart from efficiency, to the sphere of recording. See previous recipients right here (by 1983, recipients included performers).
Peter Asher’s profession started in 1964 as one-half of Peter & Gordon, whose “A World With out Love” topped the charts worldwide. 9 extra High 20 hits adopted earlier than Asher grew to become head of A&R for the Beatles’ Apple Data in 1968, and found, produced and managed James Taylor; later including Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, 10,000 Maniacs, Cher, Diana Ross, Kenny Loggins, Bonnie Raitt, Robin Williams, Stevie Nicks, Lyle Lovett, Morrissey, Steve Martin & Edie Brickell, Ed Sheeran, and extra to his roster. Asher received the GRAMMY for Producer Of The Yr in each 1977 and 1989. He hosts a success radio present “From Me To You” on Sirius XM and is far in demand not solely within the studio however as a performer, speaker and writer.
The legendary Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame inductee DJ Kool Herc is persistently credited because the founding father of hip-hop. His mastery on the turntables is understood worldwide, as are his optimistic contributions to the evolution of hip-hop tradition. Herc’s reputation rose by enjoying lengthy units of varied rhythm breaks strung collectively. In contrast to any of his DJ counterparts, Herc just isn’t a fast rapper who retains your head spinning with a patter, however he’s a musical innovator to the turntables. He first launched utilizing two turntables to make the beats last more, creating the phantasm of 1 lengthy break for the B-Boys to point out off their abilities. Herc has acquired a substantial amount of recognition throughout his lifetime, together with his induction into the 2023 Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame, and recognition from the New York Landmarks Conservancy as a 2023 Residing Landmark.
Joel Katz has performed a profound position in shaping the leisure business by his work in facilitating entertainment-related company acquisitions and mergers and consulting multi-national and multi-media leisure corporations. Katz was ranked Billboard journal’s No. 1 leisure lawyer in its “Energy 100” listing of strongest executives within the music enterprise and has been referred to as “the dealmaker who thinks exterior the field.” At Kennesaw State College, Katz endowed and commenced a industrial music program – one of many largest music teaching programs in America with over 500 college students. He has authored and co-authored many articles and commentary on subjects regarding leisure regulation. In honor of his work, the College of Tennessee School of Regulation devoted its library in his identify, the Joel A. Katz Regulation Library.
Technical GRAMMY Award Honorees: This Particular Advantage Award is offered by vote of the Producers & Engineers Wing® Advisory Council and Chapter Committees and ratification by the Recording Academy’s Nationwide Trustees to people and/or corporations/organizations/establishments who’ve made contributions of excellent technical significance to the recording subject. See previous recipients right here.
Tom Kobayashi and Tom Scott met at Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound in 1985, when the duo joined the corporate and accomplished the constructing of the Skywalker post-production services in each Northern and Southern California. Collectively, Kobayashi and Scott launched the Leisure Digital Community, also called “EDnet,” which employed fiber-optic networks to ship high-quality video and audio nice distances. Its then-revolutionary expertise enabled the business to hyperlink collectively expertise, executives and manufacturing services at nice price financial savings. For 25 years, that firm linked a whole bunch of recording studios worldwide within the days earlier than the Web might deal with high-quality audio. EDnet grew to become part of Onstream Media, and over the a long time, tens of 1000’s of long-distance collaboration periods have been facilitated for the music, promoting, TV, and cinema companies.
Greatest Track For Social Change Award Honorees: This Particular Advantage Award honors songwriter(s) of message-driven music that speaks to the social problems with our time and has demonstrated and impressed optimistic international affect. The finalists and recipient(s) are chosen yearly by a Blue-Ribbon Committee composed of a neighborhood of friends devoted to creative expression, the craft of songwriting and the ability of songs to impact social change. See previous recipients right here.
In June 2023, singer-songwriter Ok’naan launched the inspiring single and accompanying video “Refugee,” co-written by GRAMMY Award-winning songwriter Steve McEwan and GRAMMY-nominated producer Gerald Eaton (additionally recognized by his stage identify, Jarvis Church). “Refugee” stands out as a particular musical endeavor, skillfully interweaving private and political narratives, and serving as a tribute to refugees around the globe. With the only, Ok’naan drew inspiration from his private experiences, aiming to redefine the standard notion of the time period “refugee” into an emblem of resilience and power. The music was written with the hopes of encouraging people to embrace the phrase “refugee” proudly and to offer these made homeless by battle a music that felt like house.
