Herbie Hancock, Jefferson Airplane, Linda Ronstadt, Ruth Brown, Celia Cruz, Run DMC and Earth, Wind & Fire were named Wednesday recipients of The Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Awards.
The award honors performers “who have made contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.”
“Each year, the academy has the distinct privilege of honoring those who have greatly contributed to our industry and cultural heritage, and this year we have a gifted and brilliant group of honorees,” academy President/CEO Neil Portnow said. “Their exceptional accomplishments, contributions and artistry will continue to influence and inspire generations to come.”
The late composer John Cage and music producers Fred Foster and Chris Strachwitz were named recipients of the academy’s Trustees Awards, honoring people who make non-performance contributions to the recording industry.
Physicist Harvey Fletcher, known as the father of stereophonic sound, will be posthumously honored with a Technical Grammy Award, along with manufacturing company EMT, which originally produced high-end turntables and in 1957 developed a reverberation unit that dramatically changed the sound of popular music, according to the academy.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony being planned for this spring.
—City News Service