When the Recording Academy put the Grammy Hall of Fame on hiatus for a year, they said they were rethinking the entire process. They weren't kidding. The first fruits of the retooling will be seen on Tuesday (May 21) when the inaugural Grammy Hall of Fame Induction Gala takes place at the Novo Theater at LA Live in Los Angeles.
Michael Sticka, President/CEO of the Grammy Museum, says his hope for the induction event is to “build it to eventually become the Museum's version of MusiCares Person of the Year, to raise money for our programming ».
There are also plans to “build a permanent interactive exhibit to celebrate the Hall of Fame and educate our visitors. It will open early next year.”
The first five inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame were announced on the Grammy telecast in March 1974, and the Grammy Museum opened in December 2008, but this is the first time the Museum has partnered with the Recording Academy in a major way to celebrate the Hall of Fame.
“The Hall of Fame and the Museum almost go hand in hand,” says Sticka. “When we started talking about what this thing could actually be, we talked about how the Hall of Fame should live in the Museum. It makes perfect sense.”
These changes are the result of Sticka meeting with Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and Ruby Marchand, the Academy's chief awards and industry officer, to find ways to build the Grammy Hall of Fame into a higher-profile entity. “The whole idea was 'let's get away from just doing a press release,'” Sticka says of the upcoming gala.
They also made several major changes to how the Grammy HOF works. In recent decades, 25 or more inductees have been introduced each year. Starting this year, there will be only 10. “We wanted to get it down to a manageable number. If we had 25-30 recordings, it's really hard to properly identify each one during an event.”
This year's 10 new inductees bring the total number of recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame to 1,162.
There will be live performances to honor six of this year's honorees at Tuesday's event, and video slideshows for the other four. R&B singer William Bell will perform his own recording titled “You Don't Miss Your Water.” Andra Day will perform a song from Lauryn Hill's Lauryn Hill's Bad EducationThe War and Treaty will sing Charley Pride's “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” Elle King will perform Wanda Jackson's “Let's Have a Party,” and Hanson will perform the Doobie Brothers' “What a Fool Believes.”
“We really focused on the performance of the tribute [format]but William wanted to do it [his own song] and we wouldn't say no to that opportunity,” says Sticka.
This year's Induction Gala will be produced by Ken Ehrlich, who has amassed nine Primetime Emmy nominations over four decades, along with Chantel Sausedo and Ron Basile. Greg Phillinganes will be musical director.
This year's gala will be filmed but not televised. The plan is to condense this first induction gala and send it to Academy partners CBS, which has televised the Grammys every year since 1973, and PBS, which aired the Academy's Special Merit Awards under the title Grammy salute to music legends for about five years below that Great Performances banner.
“It's hard to do an event for the first time,” says Sticka. “There is no proof of concept. [We’re] filming it so we can show what it's going to look like and show what's possible and hopefully someone will pick it up in the future to get it on TV.”
Clips from the show will be hosted on COLLECTION:live, the Grammy Museum's streaming site.
A second change to the Grammy Hall of Fame process is that the Academy no longer sets aside a certain number of slots for recordings made before 1950. The one pre-1950 recording inducted this year, Creole Orchestra's “Ory's Creole Trombone” (1922) of Kid Ory impressively made the cut without a spot reserved for very old recordings. Now, the only requirement is that all recordings must be at least 25 years old.
The selections were made by a special committee of about 20 people who had several Zoom meetings. Sticka says he sat on the committee but didn't vote. “There was a lot of talk around a lot of recordings,” he says.
A third change is that the Grammy Hall of Fame will honor a record label each year. Atlantic Records, which was celebrating its 75th anniversary when these discussions began, is the first label to be honored. (The label was founded in October 1947 and released its first recordings in January 1948.) Although the 75th anniversary has passed, it will be honored. The 76th anniversary just doesn't have the same ring.
Atlantic has no recordings inducted this year, but has 38 Hall of Fame appearances.
As part of the Atlantic salute, two current Atlantic artists perform Grammy Hall of Fame classics by legendary Atlantic artists. Shinedown perform “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. Ravyn Lenae sings “Killing Me Softly With His Song” by Roberta Flack. Atlantic had a big contribution in its section. “They know themselves best, so we left it up to them,” says Sticka. “We had many conversations with them.”
Starting this year, all artists, producers, songwriters and engineers working on a Grammy Hall of Fame inductee will receive a certificate, provided they worked on 51% or more of the recording and had primary involvement in that capacity . No statuettes though. You have to win a Grammy in competition to get one of these.
