Trustees Award: Jim Marshall

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Henry Diltz and Graham Nash pay tribute to one of music's most iconic photographers

Henry Diltz and Graham Nash

GRAMMYs

Jan 15, 2014 - 4:44 pm

GRAMMY.com

(In addition to the GRAMMY Awards, The Recording Academy presents Special Merit Awards recognizing contributions of significance to the recording field, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, Trustees Award and Technical GRAMMY Award. In the days leading up to the 56th GRAMMY Awards, GRAMMY.com will present the tributes to the 2014 Special Merit Awards recipients.)

Jim Marshall was my guru. He told me so himself. He was the guru of most of today's music photographers because he was one of the first and one of the best. His mantra was "Get the picture!"

I met him in the mid-'60s. He worked mostly in San Francisco and I worked mostly in L.A., but our paths crossed at the Monterey Pop Festival and at Woodstock, and then more often as the years went by.

There are many colorful adjectives that come to mind when remembering Jim: irascible, impatient, explosive, but always very, very kindhearted. He liked to drink and tell stories and he loved pretty women. "Cars, guns and cameras always get me into trouble," he used to say. He brooked no denial as he waded right in with his little Leica clicking quietly and constantly. His eye was amazing as he caught the essence of each scene before him. His subjects loved his energy and commitment to the moment. He was always very much in the moment.

I had always known Jim for his photos of San Francisco's rich music scene: the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Santana. I knew his famous photo of Johnny Cash giving the finger (a message to the warden of the San Quentin State Prison), but I was totally unprepared for the breadth of his subject matter the day I walked into a gallery in L.A.'s Bergamot Station that was exhibiting his work. There were several big rooms whose walls were completely covered with his photos from floor to ceiling with no space in between. I saw old blues singers, civil rights marches, baseball players, famous comedians, beatniks, hippies, and jazz musicians. I never saw so many pictures on a wall in my life. That huge collection of images is his living gift to us all.

Jim had no family as long as I knew him; his family was his friends, all of whom have hilarious and harried "Jim" stories they love to share. Some involve guns, some involve drugs, all involve the "F" word (his favorite), and all include an awe and a warm feeling for the man we all loved.

We still love you, Jim!

— Henry Diltz

The world is a better place because of the talent and vision of my friend Jim Marshall. He, of course, took countless iconic photographs over the years and always brought a deeper insight into the world of photography and music. His images can be likened to haiku poetry: everything in its proper place … no "extra" information … only the very essences necessary to convey what he wants us to see. Never one to be dissuaded from a good shot, he opened our eyes to the wonders of his portraits. Jim's images always have a sense of completeness and his ability to compose instantly is renowned. It's possible that I took the last portrait of Jim shortly before his untimely passing. Jim may be gone but his images will absolutely stand the test of time and be around for us to see and enjoy for years to come.

— Graham Nash

(With a career spanning more than 40 years, photographer Henry Diltz is responsible for capturing iconic images of historic events such as Woodstock and artists including Blondie; Eric Clapton; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; the Doors; and Led Zeppelin; among countless others. In 2001 Diltz co-founded the Morrison Hotel Gallery, which represents some of the most renowned photographers in music.)

(A GRAMMY-winning founding member of Crosby, Stills And Nash and the Hollies, and two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Graham Nash is also a photographer and published author. His photographic work is collected in the book Eye To Eye: Photographs By Graham Nash. In 2008 he curated others' photographic work in Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock 'N' Roll Photographs Selected By Graham Nash (2009). Since 2005 the first IRIS 3047 printer owned by Nash's digital printing company, Nash Editions, and one of its first published works — his 1969 portrait of David Crosby — have been in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.)

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Trustees Award: Rick Hall

Alicia Keys pays tribute to the father of Muscle Shoals Music

Alicia Keys

GRAMMYs

Jan 21, 2014 - 3:25 pm

GRAMMY.com

The moment I stepped into Rick Hall's Fame Recording Studios, I felt a buzz! I was giddy like a little girl with excitement! The history, fellowship and talent of the artists who'd come before enveloped and surround me and it was powerful. I tasted it on my lips, it sank down to my heart. I wanted to absorb and revel in the ambiance where this beautiful music was created and has gone on to move generations.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the legacy and the names that walked through Fame Recording Studios' doors and put Muscle Shoals, Ala., on the music map. As someone who has a real love and appreciation for music, I wish I could have spent just a few moments in the presence of the artists who made magic at Fame. I wish I could have sat in on those sessions with Etta James, Andy Williams, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett, just to name a few, as they found there was something incredibly special bubbling alongside the rolling Tennessee River. It had Southern charm, deep soul, R&B, rock, pop, and just the right dose of funk. It was original and Rick Hall and the musicians he brought together were the very heartbeat of the sounds that came from the now-legendary town.

Hall built Muscle Shoals from the ground up with his determined spirit. Originally an artist and songwriter, Hall understood what it was like to want to share your music with the world. When doors were closed on him, he opened his own with his first small studio and soon after laid down roots as a music producer in Muscle Shoals. Thanks to Hall, the town of about 1,000 has since become home to countless musicians, with many getting their first start and a chance to be a part of something completely original.

While the civil rights movement shook the country, the musicians entering Fame Studios were colorblind. Side by side with Hall, they created some of the most unique sounds and lasting music of their generation. Maybe Hall didn't know it then, but he was truly bringing people together through the universal language of music. The name Hall was making for himself with Fame Studios had artists from all over the world heading down south for a chance to be a part of what could come out of that magical studio.

Anyone who creates music knows that any good song comes with little magic, and I am proud to have been able to record at Fame Studios as part of the documentary Muscle Shoals. I was filled from being able to learn more about and experience a little bit of what Hall had created. He is a leader and visionary for our industry. His sheer diligence and determination are a lesson in themselves. And his desire to find the magic is the Soul of the Shoals. He is truly the father of Muscle Shoals music.

(GRAMMY winner Alicia Keys was featured in the 2013 documentary Muscle Shoals, and contributed a cover of Bob Dylan's "Pressing On" to the film's soundtrack. Keys is nominated this year in the Best R&B Album category for Girl On Fire.)

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Trustees Award: Ennio Morricone

A tribute to one of film and television's most prolific composers

GRAMMYs

Jan 13, 2014 - 4:37 pm

GRAMMY.com

Hear that whistling? That's not just the haunting sound of the theme to the 1965 classic spaghetti Western For A Few Dollars More, that's the signature sound of composer Ennio Morricone. And that theme was just the prelude to one of the most classic and enduring movie themes of all time: Morricone's theme to the 1966 follow-up film, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. The series of iconic Sergio Leone-directed Clint Eastwood movies (that also included A Fistful Of Dollars) and their moody soundtracks full of kitschy instrumentation had such a powerful impact on film buff-turned-filmmaker Quentin Tarantino that decades later Morricone would score Tarantino films such as Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained.

In between, Morricone scored more than 500 films and TV shows, won a 1987 GRAMMY for Best Album Or Original Instrumental Background Score for his work on The Untouchables, has been nominated for five Oscars and received an honorary Oscar in 2006 for his contributions to film, and became a towering institution in the film scoring world.

The son of a jazz trumpeter, Morricone was born in Rome in 1928. His musical gifts developed early. He was composing by age 6. In the late '50s he found work as an orchestrator and assistant to leading Italian film composer Nascio Nascimbene. Morricone himself began writing film scores in the early '60s, and early on connected with Leone's Westerns. It was during this time he began to cultivate his unique style, incorporating whistling, flutes, electric guitars, Jew's harp, and wordless choruses (with occasional vocal grunts) into his music.

He would go on to compose scores in various styles, earning Oscar nominations for Days Of Heaven (1978), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Malèna (2000).

Prolific barely describes an artist who in just one year, 1969, racked up 22 different composing credits, and whose more than 500 film and TV scores since 1960 works out to more than 10 projects a year.

The wide appeal of Morricone's music and respect for the man resulted in We All Love Ennio Morricone, a 2007 tribute album featuring artists as varied as Celine Dion, Metallica, Roger Waters, and Yo-Yo Ma.

So the next time you find yourself whistling "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" — which fellow arranger/conductor/composer Hugo Montenegro took to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a sleek version in 1968 — know that you're quoting the work of a true master.

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Technical GRAMMY Award: Lexicon

Multi-platinum producer Brian Malouf honors the magical sounds of the esteemed audio equipment manufacturer

Brian Malouf

GRAMMYs

Jan 19, 2014 - 6:00 am

GRAMMY.com

It was the first thing you noticed, even before the iconic console upon which it was often perched (sometimes on its own special plexiglass shelf) — that magical remote control known as the LARC (Lexicon Alphanumeric Remote Control). The off-white, fader-driven controller of the awesome digital reverb hidden away in the machine room that announced that the studio you were in was firmly entrenched in the new, modern digital age of reverberation.

It was in the control room of the studio I was taught in — the place where I learned to be a recording engineer — and it was the most fun and challenging of all the devices I stayed up nights learning how to use. I'm still employing those wonderful sounds today, and making new presets all the time.

The Lexicon 224 Digital Reverb was the most advanced and versatile digital processing device of its generation and a pioneering and mind-boggling way to enhance with echo, delay, time shift, and reverberation any source you cared to feed into it, and in the most convincing of ways. It gave engineers vast new powers of controlling the ambience in which to spatially place the elements of a recording in the bold new automation-driven mixdown suites of the early '80s. It was the predecessor of the 224XL and the 480L, those monster Lexicon digital reverbs against which all others have since been compared.

It was intoxicating. In addition to the superb reverb algorithms there were six delay taps in the delays section, all with individual control over high and low pass filters, depth of oscillation, time and panning. With this singular device, Lexicon products were vaulted into the stratosphere of the elite, must-have audio effects that the most demanding artists on the planet had to see (and hear) used on their tracks. We never had it so good.

From the humble beginnings of the first Lexicon Delta digital delay, to the Prime Time I — Lexicon's unique digital delay device with detent knobs that selected only prime numbers as possibilities for delay times — to today's PCM96, which allows an engineer to control all the parameters of a very sophisticated standalone reverb device from a Digital Audio Workstation and reset it with each new session and offers the range of reverb plug-ins that faithfully reproduce the algorithms of the reverb programs that made the company famous in the first place, Lexicon has remained a prime innovator and thrived in an era of almost unimaginable change in the processes associated with sound recording. The company and the designers behind these products have remained relevant to recording engineers working out of their bedroom or in the most serious recording studios in the world, and all the employees in every department at Lexicon are the most deserving recipients of the 2014 Technical GRAMMY Award.

(Brian Malouf is a multi-platinum producer, engineer and mixer who has worked with artists such as the Dave Matthews Band, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Pearl Jam, Queen, and Stevie Wonder, among others.)

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Technical GRAMMY Award: Emile Berliner

Paul Charosh pays tribute to the audio pioneer behind the gramophone and microphone

Paul Charosh

GRAMMYs

Jan 18, 2014 - 8:00 am

GRAMMY.com

Emile Berliner was born in 1851 in Hanover, Germany, emigrated to the United States in 1870, and settled in Washington, D.C. During this decade a number of inventions of lasting importance were patented, including the telephone and the phonograph. Berliner's restless, inventive mind focused on these devices and he devoted his energies to improving them.

His initial concern was with the telephone. Berliner wanted to develop a more efficient transmission and reception process and make the telephone a practical means of communication. He is known to his biographer, Frederic Wile, as "the maker of the microphone" and today an award with this title is offered annually by the Berliner family. During the 1920s modified versions of the microphone became routinely incorporated into the recording process.

Berliner's interest in sound recording prompted an attempt to improve upon Edison's phonograph and in 1887 he received the first of several patents. At this time those working with the phonograph believed it could become a voice transcription device useful in business offices and did not see its potential as a means of home entertainment. Sound waves were cut vertically into revolving wax cylinders. These objects were fragile, difficult to store, and subject to attracting mold which rendered them unplayable. No method of reproducing copies of a specific cylinder existed. If a cylinder holding sound that was worth preserving was rendered unplayable, one had to record another one.

Berliner recorded on a disc, and sound waves were cut laterally, thus eliminating a source of sound distortion intrinsic in the vertical-cut process. Discs had a center hole and were held in place by a spindle in the center of the turntable on which the disc rested. His discs did not deteriorate with time, were easy to store, and if not abused, sound today as they did when recorded and sold during the 1890s. Berliner's device also allowed for the creation of a master disc from which many identical copies could be made. Berliner also understood the value of the gramophone as a source of entertainment and in 1895 he procured capital from a group of businessmen to found the Berliner Gramophone Company, which was instituted to manufacture Berliner's sound discs and the gramophone that played them.

Though he passed away in 1929, Berliner's vision encouraged the development of the modern record industry, dependent through most of the 20th century on profits accrued from the sale of identically recorded discs distributed in mass quantities.

(Paul Charosh is a widely published researcher of historic sound recordings and 19th century American popular music. A retired educator, he taught for many years in the Sociology and Computer Information Science departments at Brooklyn College. In 2012 he published Berliner Gramophone Records In America: A Discography (Denver: Mainspring Press), a reference for archivists and advanced collectors.)