B.B. King

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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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'A Charlie Brown Christmas'

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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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Eminem

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Feature

Why Eminem's "Lose Yourself" Stands Tall: For The Record

Learn why this hit from the '8 Mile' soundtrack is the focal point of the GRAMMY-winning rapper's career

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Nov 9, 2017 - 2:15 pm

With hits like "Stan" and "Love The Way You Lie," "My Name Is" and "Without Me," Eminem's catalog is littered with iconic songs. But "Lose Yourself," from the soundtrack to his semiautobiographical feature film 8 Mile, stands a cut above the rest as the best work of the rapper's storied career.

For The Record: Eminem's "Lose Yourself"

Following its release in October 2002, "Lose Yourself" gave Eminem his first-ever trip to the No. 1 slot on the Billboard Hot 100, and to date has been certified platinum or multi-platinum in more than 12 countries around the world. The single also sold more than 5 million copies in the U.S. alone.

Written on the 8 Mile film set between takes, and recorded in a special mobile studio set up in a spare courtesy trailer, the song would become the most highly decorated single of Eminem's career so far.

"Lose Yourself" was nominated for five GRAMMYs, including Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year, at the 46th GRAMMY Awards, with Eminem taking home two golden gramophones for Best Male Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song.

The track also earned the distinction of winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song, making Eminem the first rapper — and "Lose Yourself" the first rap song — to take home an Oscar in the category.

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Lauryn Hill

Photo: SGranitz/Getty Images

Feature

'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill': For The Record

See the story behind Lauryn Hill's GRAMMY-winning 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill'

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Mar 15, 2018 - 1:29 pm

The 41st GRAMMY Awards played host to a number of historic musical moments. Aside from being a massive evening for female creators across the board – with Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Dixie Chicks, Celine Dion, and Sheryl Crowe all taking home one or more awards – the evening also saw a compelling performance by Ricky Martin that ignited a Latin Pop explosion in the coming year, as well as a series of landmark wins by Lauryn Hill including the first time in GRAMMY history that the coveted Album Of The Year honors went to a hip-hop artist.

For The Record: 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill'

Hill's hugely acclaimed solo debut album The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill – which to this day remains her only career solo release – was a force to be reckoned with.

Debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the album broke the standing record for first-week sales by a female artist, selling close to 423,000 copies in its first seven days. The album chronicles Hill's reflections on a disintegrating relationship, having emerged stronger and wiser on the other side of a period of personal darkness.

Presenting a uniquely strong female perspective on life, love and relationships that was (and still is) noticeably absent in contemporary pop music, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill was packed with lyrically deep songs that managed to be inescapably catchy and poignant at the same time. All three singles serviced to radio – "Doo Wop (That Thing)," "Ex-Factor," and "Everything Is Everything" – charted Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, with "Doo Wop" eventually claiming the chart's top spot. "Everything Is Everything" is also notable for standing as the first recorded appearance by a young John Legend in commercial music. Legend, credited under his birth name of John Stephens, played backing piano on the track.

The album earned a total of 10 nominations at the 41st GRAMMY Awards, and Hill took the stage during the evening's festivities for a rousing performance of "To Zion," with the notable accompaniment of Carlos Santana, with whom she would share in an Album Of The Year Win at the 42nd GRAMMYs for the legendary guitarist's globally successful Clive Davis-produced smash hit album Supernatural.

Altogether, Hill took home five GRAMMY Awards for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, including Album Of The Year, Best R&B Album, Best New Artist, Best R&B Song, and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance – the latter two both for "Doo Wop (That Thing)."

With her previous wins for Best Rap Album (The Score) and Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal ("Killing Me Softly With His Song") as a member of the hip-hop/soul supergroup Fugees, Hill's wins at the 41st GRAMMYs brought her total career wins to seven (rising to eight total the following year, thanks to her shared win for Supernatural). Hill also remains one of just five female artists who can count two or more Album Of The Year wins among their career honors.

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Chris Stapleton

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Feature

Chris Stapleton, 'From A Room: Volume 1': For The Record

See the story behind Chris Stapleton's GRAMMY-winning 'From A Room: Volume 1'

Brian Haack

GRAMMYs

Mar 1, 2018 - 5:34 pm

In crafting his 2017 sophomore album From A Room: Volume 1, Chris Stapleton had some mighty tall expectations to meet.

For The Record: 'From A Room: Volume 1'

Stapleton's 2015 solo debut album Traveller brought the Nashville-based singer/songwriter widespread acclaim, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart before crossing over into mainstream territory following Stapleton's hugely popular duo performance with Justin Timberlake at the 2015 CMA Awards. Shortly after the CMA's, Traveller hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

The songs Stapleton assembled for his follow-up, From A Room: Volume 1, saw him more deeply explore the sounds and themes of his musical foundations in country, blues, and roots rock. Surprisingly, however, much of the music for From A Room: Vol. 1 was actually written well before the release of Stapleton's 2015 debut.

The offices housing RCA Records' Studio A in 1965
Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images

The album takes its title from RCA Studio A, an iconic recording space in Nashville where Stapleton recorded all of the tracks that made the final record. As was the case with Traveller, Stapleton was once again joined in Studio A by GRAMMY-winning producer Dave Cobb in crafting From A Room: Volume 1.

Across its long and storied past, RCA's Studio A has housed sessions by everyone from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton to the Beach Boys, making it home to a massive, invaluable piece of music history. In 2014, the 50+ year-old studio was just barely saved from demolition thanks to the philanthropic efforts of music preservationists made aware of the situation by public outcry from musicians like Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl, who expressed dismay at the possibility that the studio was on the verge of destruction.

From A Room: Volume 1 generated three GRAMMY nominations for Stapleton at the 60th GRAMMY Awards: Best Country Album, Best Country Song ("Broken Halos"), and Best Country Solo Performance ("Either Way"). He won in all three categories, bringing his career total to five GRAMMY wins, with two for Best Country Album on consecutive releases.

On Dec. 1, 2017, less than seven months after releasing From A Room: Volume 1, Stapleton released From A Room: Volume 2. With nine brand-new songs also recorded in Studio A and Cobb once again at the helm as producer, From A Room: Volume 2 debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.