Talk about making a major statement about the state of the music industry in 1959. When the Grammy Awards debuted on May 4, 1959–not one artist dominating in Rock n’ Roll was nominated–not even Elvis Presley. While the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences had just formed two years earlier–reports were that many top members of the Academy were appalled about what Rock n’Roll was doing to the music industry. It might also be assumed by some that the Recording Academy was started in the first place as an answer to the emergence of Rock n’Roll and the fear that it was going to ruin the quality of songs and the artists who were dominant in what they called Pop in those days. The paranoia and fear was as palpable as the fear of Communism was when those biases still permeated some circles of show business in a post-McCarthy universe.
Obviously, the Recording Academy succeeded in living out their mission statement that they were going to make sure the American people were reminded of the classy, high-quality music that was still being made in the industry. Perhaps that would have worked had the show been broadcast on TV. It didn’t get on TV for another 12 years (ABC started airing it in 1971 before CBS had it later)–and even then, it only awarded some of the rock bands that were unavoidable…such as that little group called the Beatles. In 1959, though, every one of the winners could probably be a rundown of the most legendary jazz and easy listening pop artists of all time.
Ironically, they were all overshadowed by an international song sung in Italian…something the Grammys today relegates to an “international” category presented only in the pre-ceremonies…
Pop Goes the Jazz, Country…and Musical Show categories…
The central categories were for “Pop” at this first ceremony–with the previously-derided (at least in the Pop and Jazz worlds) Country category at least being acknowledged to exist. Jazz artists at least liked country music (it was the sad “stories” that they loved), so you’d expect peace across the board at these ceremonies. The deal was, though, that the Kingston Trio won for their classic tune “Tom Dooley” under…you guessed it, the Best Country and Western Performance. Why didn’t they just admit it and say Country stood in for Best Folk Performance? A huge load of legendary Country artists were obviously shut out that year–hence why Country likely started their own Academy of Country Music later.
In the Jazz category–the one woman and man who probably represented the genre the best in a traditional light won: Ella Fitzgerald for individual performance and Count Basie for group. Of course, jazz was progressing light years ahead by this time with various progressive artists and combos. If biased snobbery wasn’t so high–someone like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans or Dave Brubeck should have won. At least jazz has received loads of respect at the Grammy in the decades since–including the 2008 50th anniversary ceremony at the time of this writing.
Broadway recordings (or the “Musical Show” category) were a major part of the Grammy Awards for a while–and today are stuck in a very minor category. At this first ceremony, “The Music Man” won for best original Broadway cast album, which would still get votes today due to its legion of fans. For some reason, the best soundtrack album from a movie was consolidated with this category–because Andre Previn won for his adaptation of the score for “Gigi.
What’s the most interesting was the Pop category itself. Today, when we start to hear Jazz creeping back into the Top 40 in subtle ways–the first Grammy ceremony thought it’d be fun to make Ella Fitzgerald not only win in the Jazz category–but also one of the subcategories in Pop. She won for Best Pop Vocal Female Performance on her “Duke Ellington Songbook” album. Count Basie also crossed over to the briefly-used “Best Performance by a Dance Band” in the Pop category.
The rest of the winners in Pop were throwbacks to the Big Band era, which seemed to indicate that the Big Band swingers were trying to stage some kind of musical revolution to take back the music charts…or at least feel that they still mattered in a vastly-changing musical universe. The rest of the winners in Pop were Big Band leaders Louis Prima and Billy May. And let’s not forget Perry Como winning for Best Male Vocal Performance at the height of his popularity thanks to a bunch of novelty hits that could comfortably snuggle in with those Rock hits permeating the charts.
Speaking of novelty–this was the big year for Ross Bagdasarian and his “Chipmunk Song” that won under the “Comedy Album” and “Children’s Album” categories that received more prominence back then than they do now.
R&B; winners? A joke! And then one honoree that sounds a little like Rock n’ Roll…
If you thought it couldn’t get any worse with the skewering of Country and twisted takes on the other categories–the Academy had to go and place R&B; on the list–only as a cover so they didn’t have to really recognize the legendary R&B; artists having one hit after another that year. It’ll probably make you wince when I tell you they honored The Champs for their instrumental hit “Tequila”, which was actually closer to Rock n’ Roll than anywhere near R&B.; But back then those two categories could have been a bit interchangeable.
It has to be argued that the Grammys ignoring these categories for a number of years probably spawned all of the other offshoot award shows for particular musical categories. The Grammys finally trying to bring all categories together in a fair way in recent years is akin to someone trying to reunite a family that already was used to existing in factions for too long.
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Really, the only winner at these inaugural ceremonies that sounded anything remotely close to Rock n’ Roll was the winning of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” for Best Arrangement and Best Album of the Year. They couldn’t have made a better choice for Album of the Year anyway–and, in the face of irony, a million Rock guitarists have made Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” a must-learn piece to play in recent decades.
While Frank Sinatra dominated for the second Grammy ceremonies in 1960 (and numerous times up to 1966)–the Grammys finally honored one artist who succeeded on the Rock charts: Bobby Darin. However, the second ceremony still didn’t honor Rock n’Roll. Darin won for his classic “Mack the Knife” instead.
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After all of that, the first Grammy Awards went and awarded Record and Song of the Year to “Volare”–sung by an Italian singer previously unknown here in the U.S.: Domenico Modugno.
As some of the lines said in “Volare” that could have put this first ceremony in context:
Let us leave the confusion and all disillusion behind
Just like bird of a feather, a rainbow together we’ll find…
