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Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners

  • Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong borrowed his stepfather's gun without permission on the 31st of December 1912, fired a blank into the air, and spent the night at New Orleans…
  • The BeatlesThe Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960, and within four years an estimated 73 million Americans watched four young men from northern England play on a…
  • Michael JacksonMichael Joseph Jackson was born on the 29th of August 1958 in Gary, Indiana, the eighth of ten children in an African-American working-class household…
  • Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham.
  • David BowieDavid Bowie was born David Robert Jones on the 8th of January 1947 in Brixton, London, and he died two days after releasing his final album, on the 10th of…
  • Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley walked onto the stage of the International Hotel in Las Vegas on the 31st of July 1969, without a single word of introduction.
  • Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey.
  • Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix died in London on the 18th of September 1970, at the age of 27, from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was, by then, the world's highest-paid…
  • John LennonAt approximately 5:00 p.m. on the 8th of December 1980, John Lennon autographed a copy of his new album for a man named Mark David Chapman outside his New…
  • Queen (band)Queen played their last concert with Freddie Mercury on the 9th of August 1986, in front of more than 120,000 fans at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire.
  • Buddy HollyBuddy Holly was 22 years old when he died in a cornfield five miles northwest of Clear Lake, Iowa, on the 3rd of February 1959.
  • Billie HolidayBillie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan on the 7th of April, 1915, died with seventy cents in the bank. She had made a quarter of a million dollars in the three…
  • Aretha FranklinAretha Franklin heard Otis Redding's reaction to her own version of his song "Respect": "That little girl done took my song away from me." She had added a…
  • Led ZeppelinLed Zeppelin sold somewhere between 200 and 300 million records, yet record executives at Atlantic Records signed them in November 1968 without ever having…
  • Nirvana (band)Nirvana formed in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1987, and by January 1992 had displaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous from the top of the Billboard album charts.
  • Prince (musician)Prince Rogers Nelson arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis on the 7th of June, 1958, and for the next 57 years he operated at a pitch that most…
  • Marvin GayeOn the 1st of April 1984, in a house in the Western Heights area of West Adams in Los Angeles, Marvin Gaye was shot twice by his own father.
  • Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald walked onto the stage of the Apollo Theater on the 21st of November 1934, planning to dance. She was 17 years old, and she had recently…
  • Little RichardIn October 1947, a fourteen-year-old boy was singing Sister Rosetta Tharpe's songs to himself before her performance at the Macon City Auditorium.
  • Black SabbathBlack Sabbath placed an advertisement in a Birmingham music shop in the late 1960s that read: "OZZY ZIG Needs Gig - has own PA".
  • Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That…
  • Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C.
  • Judy GarlandJudy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on the 10th of June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to a family that lived and breathed performance.
  • Sam CookeSam Cooke walked into a recording session in the mid-1950s and began singing George Gershwin. Art Rupe, the head of Specialty Records, was furious.
  • James BrownJames Brown was supposed to be named Joseph James Brown. A clerk reversed his first and middle names on his birth certificate, and the mistake stuck.
  • Earth, Wind & FireEarth, Wind & Fire formed in Chicago in 1969, and over the next five decades they sold more than 90 million records worldwide.
  • Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar he had traded for a nickel-plated trumpet his father…
  • John ColtraneJohn William Coltrane was born on the 23rd of September 1926, in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in Hamlet, North Carolina.
  • Joni MitchellJoni Mitchell saved up to buy a single album at a bootleg price because she could not find it in Canada. The record was The Hottest New Group in Jazz by…
  • Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm.
  • The SupremesTwelve times, a record by the Supremes climbed to the very top of the Billboard Hot 100. No other American vocal group has matched that run.
  • Chuck BerryChuck Berry was buried with a cherry-red Gibson ES-355 guitar bolted to the inside lid of his coffin. That image captures something essential about the man…
  • The Beach BoysThe Beach Boys formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961, and within a few years had become one of the most argued-over bands on the planet.
  • George Clinton (funk musician)George Edward Clinton was born on the 22nd of July, 1941, in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, where as a teenager he did two…
  • Bing CrosbyBing Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold over 50 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling single of all time.
  • Johnny CashJohnny Cash began his concerts the same way for decades, walking to the microphone and saying four words: "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash." The man who said them was…
  • The DoorsThe Doors formed on a beach in Santa Monica in July 1965 when Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek ran into each other in front of Manzarek's house on Fraser Avenue.
  • Run-DMCRun-DMC formed in 1983 in Hollis, Queens, New York City, and by 1986 had achieved something no hip-hop act had done before: a multi-platinum record.
  • Jerry Lee LewisJerry Lee Lewis walked into Sun Records in Memphis in November 1956 with nothing but nerve. Label owner Sam Phillips was out of town, so producer Jack…
  • Grammy Lifetime Achievement AwardIn 1963, the Recording Academy presented its first Lifetime Achievement Award to Bing Crosby. This moment marked the official birth of a new honor created…
  • Bee GeesThe Bee Gees were the act that made Barry Gibb the only songwriter in history to have four consecutive number-one hits in the United States, breaking a…
  • George HarrisonGeorge Harrison was born at 12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, Liverpool, on the 25th of February 1943, in a terraced house on a cul-de-sac with an outdoor toilet…
  • Dolly PartonDolly Rebecca Parton was born on the 19th of January 1946 in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, Tennessee.
  • Grandmaster Flash and the Furious FiveGrandmaster Flash and the Furious Five coined a word that would define a generation of music. At a party in the South Bronx, a performer named Cowboy began…
  • Roy OrbisonRoy Kelton Orbison left a room feeling different after he sang. Where other male performers of his era projected confidence and ease, Orbison sang about…
  • Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, into a household where Italian was spoken by his grandparents and gas…
  • Julie AndrewsJulie Andrews stood on a beer crate to reach the microphone. She was not yet ten years old, performing spontaneously in wartime variety shows alongside her…
  • KraftwerkKraftwerk formed in Düsseldorf in 1970, built by two students named Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. They had met at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in the…
  • Bo DiddleyBo Diddley stepped onto The Ed Sullivan Show on the 20th of November, 1955, and promptly ignored every instruction he had been given.
  • Gil Scott-HeronGil Scott-Heron was born on the 1st of April, 1949, in Chicago, and by the time he died on the 27th of May, 2011, he had changed American music in ways that…