B.B. King

Photo: Neil Lupin/Getty Images

Feature

B.B. King, "Auld Lang Syne": For The Record

Revisit the King of the Blues' interpretation on the New Year's standard, which ultimately earned him a GRAMMY

GRAMMYs

Dec 28, 2017 - 9:59 am

B.B. King's 39th studio album, the 2001 holiday LP A Christmas Celebration Of Hope, brought the blues legend home the GRAMMY for Best Traditional Blues Album at the 45th GRAMMY Awards. Additionally, the album's closing track, King's cheerful instrumental interpretation of the Scottish traditional "Auld Lang Syne," earned King the GRAMMY for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.

For The Record: B.B. King's "Auld Lang Syne"

The album also performed well on the charts, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Top Blues Albums chart, and nearly cracking the Top 20 of the Holiday Albums chart, peaking at No. 21.

A New Year's standard sung all over the world to herald the closing of one year and the opening of a new one, "Auld Lang Syne" takes its lyrics from a Scottish poem written by Robert Burns in the late 18th century. Loosely translated, the title means "days gone by," or "long, long ago," making the song's opening lyrics a rhetorical question pondering whether it is right that old times be forgotten.

With swelling big-band horns and King's signature creamy guitar tones, this reimagining of the classic holiday favorite makes for the perfect change-up for any midnight revelers who've grown tired of the famous Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians version, played over loudspeakers throughout Times Square every year following the ball drop on New Year's Eve.

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Beck

Photo: Larry Busacca /Getty Images

Feature

Beck, 'Morning Phase': For The Record

Revisit Beck's journey back to the spotlight on his GRAMMY-winning ninth studio album

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Jan 11, 2018 - 5:35 pm

Marking his first solo release since 2008's Best Alternative Music Album-nominated Modern Guilt, sonically omnivorous songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Beck returned to the spotlight in 2014 with his universally acclaimed ninth studio album, Morning Phase.

For The Record: Beck's 'Morning Phase'

For Beck, the process of writing and recording the material that eventually became Morning Phase stretched out over the course of nearly a decade, beginning in 2005 when he travelled to Nashville with the intention of recording an album that, at the time, never materialized.

With the release of Modern Guilt satisfying the terms of his longstanding contract with Interscope Records and freeing Beck from further commitments to the label, he returned to the material from the Nashville sessions and went back into the studio at Jack White's Third Man Records in 2012, where he cut the tracks that would become "Blackbird Chain," Country Down," and "Waking Light."

Beck went back into the studio again in early 2013, this time in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he completed tracking a large portion of the remaining songs for Morning Phase in just three days.

With a returning cast of supporting musicians from Beck's Best Alternative Music Album-nominated 2002 record Sea Change, Morning Phase became a sonic companion to the earlier release, and a spiritual successor to both Sea Change and 1994's One Foot In The Grave.

Shortly before the release of first radio single "Blue Moon" in January 2014, Stereogum ranked Morning Phase at No. 2 on its list of the "100 Most Anticipated Albums Of 2014." The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and reached Top 10 status in eight countries.

Morning Phase earned Beck the GRAMMYs for Best Rock Album and Album Of The Year at the 57th GRAMMY Awards, while the numerous mixing and master engineers who worked on the album tracks in various studios around the country between 2005 and 2014 jointly earned the GRAMMY for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

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'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

Photo: ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images

Feature

Vince Guaraldi Trio's 'A Charlie Brown Christmas': For The Record

Here's the Christmas story behind the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame-inducted soundtrack to 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Dec 14, 2017 - 3:05 pm

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." — Linus Van Pelt, A Charlie Brown Christmas

For The Record: 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

In late 1964, producer Lee Mendelson had just completed filming his documentary, Charlie Brown & Charles Schultz. As he was driving across San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge, he happened to hear Vince Guaraldi's GRAMMY-winning jazz composition "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" on his car radio, and subsequently reached out to him about composing some music for the documentary.

Two weeks later, Guaraldi called Mendelson and performed an early version of "Linus And Lucy" over the telephone.

While the documentary wasn't broadcast until May 1969, Coca-Cola reached out to Mendelson just a few months after he and Guaraldi first met and commissioned a new Christmas special based on the Peanuts characters. Mendelson knew immediately that he wanted Guaraldi involved.

For the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, Guaraldi composed jazz-based interpretations of classic Christmas carols such as "O Tannenbaum," "The Christmas Song" and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," and added in original compositions, including "Linus And Lucy" and "Christmas Time Is Here." (There's also a cover of Beethoven's "Für Elise.") The 11-song set was recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, rounded drummer Jerry Granelli and bassist Fred Marshall.

Following the first broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas in December 1965, the 30-minute special has become a holiday season staple, airing annually. Vince Guaraldi Trio would go on to be commissioned to write music for a total of 17 Peanuts television specials, as well as the 1969 feature film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.

To date, the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack has been certified quadruple-platinum by the RIAA, and in 2007, it was formally inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame.

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George Harrison

Photo: Alvan Meyerowitz/Getty Images

Feature

George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass': For The Record

Revisit how "the quiet Beatle" stepped into the spotlight to create his most ambitious and enduring work

Nate Hertweck

GRAMMYs

Nov 30, 2017 - 1:55 pm

In November 1970, a mere seven months after the Beatles officially called it quits, George Harrison released his third, and most ambitious, solo album, All Things Must Pass.

For The Record: Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass'

Co-produced by Harrison and Phil Spector, All Things Must Pass exposed a more personal side of "the quiet Beatle" backdropped by the "wall of sound" recording approach for which Spector had become famous. Harrison and Spector would work together again on the Concert For Bangladesh, which spawned a recording that won Album Of The Year the following year at the 15th Annual GRAMMY Awards.

Recorded between May and October of 1970, Harrison called upon an all-star cast of supporting musicians during the album's recording sessions, including guitarists Eric Clapton and Dave Mason, keyboardists Billy Preston and Bobby Whitlock, members of Badfinger and Delaney & Bonnie, and his pal Ringo Starr and Jim Gordon on drums.

Harrison also co-wrote the album opener, "I'd Have You Anytime," with Bob Dylan and included his own version of Dylan's "If Not For You" on All Things Must Pass. As a guitar player, Harrison leaned into his slide playing and further explored Eastern influences on songs such as "Isn't It A Pity, a sound that he had hinted at on prior Beatles recordings such as "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)."

The triple album that resulted from this blending of personnel and influences equaled some of the richest and most beloved material of Harrison's career.

All Things Must Pass was well received by critics and fans alike, with two cuts from the triple album landing at No. 1 on the U.K. Charts and yielding two Top 10 hits in "What Is Life," which peaked at No. 10, and "My Sweet Lord," which hit No. 1, making Harrison the first Beatle to have a solo No. 1 single on both the U.K. and U.S. charts.

The project went on to earn a nomination for Album Of The Year at the 14th Annual GRAMMY Awards, sell more than 6 million copies, and eventually landed in the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 2014.

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Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

Pink Floyd's The Wall

Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Feature

Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': For The Record

Find out how Roger Waters' critique of "education" journeyed from imaginative concept to the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame

Philip Merrill

GRAMMYs

Nov 23, 2017 - 8:15 am

"Teacher, leave them kids alone! All in all it's just another brick in the wall. All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

Although Pink Floyd's GRAMMY win at the 37th Annual GRAMMY Awards came without Roger Waters in the lineup, they all shared in The Wall's 2008 induction to the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame.

For The Record: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'

Originally released on Nov. 30, 1979, the epic double album was nominated for Album Of The Year and Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal at the 23rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, and was subsequently adapted into the 1982 film Pink Floyd: The Wall. Waters went on to also be nominated individually for the 2014 documentary Roger Waters: The Wall at the 58th GRAMMY Awards.

The high-concept appeal of Waters' imagination did not impress record executives initially, but over time it's caught on in a big way. The Wall has been certified 23-times platinum by the RIAA, trailing only the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits 1971–1975 and Michael Jackson's Thriller.

The single "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)" from The Wall became iconic in itself, partly thanks to obnoxious schoolmaster lines such as, "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" Many of the song's frills were added by Bob Ezrin, making itself a self-contained drama within the album's wider scope.

The main character Pink in The Wall was partially autobiographical for Waters but also partly based on former Pink Floyd bandmate Syd Barrett, who had originally named the band. The two friends struggled with similar psychological and substance-abuse issues, but Barrett's prevented him from being able to continue writing and performing. Waters was under immense pressure to step up and deliver creativity that could fill Barrett's big boots.