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2nd Grammy Awards
The 2nd Annual Grammy Awards were held on November 29, 1959, at Los Angeles and New York. They recognized musical accomplishments by performers for the year 1959. Hosted by Meredith Willson, this marked the first televised Grammy Award ceremony, and it was aired in episodes as special '' Sunday Showcase''. It was held in the same year as the first Grammy Awards in 1959, and no award ceremony was held in 1960. These awards recognized musical accomplishments by performers for that particular year. Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington each won three awards. Award winners The following awards were given at the 1959 ceremony: *Record of the Year **Bobby Darin for "Mack the Knife" ** The Browns for " The Three Bells" ** Andre Previn for "Like Young (Single)" **Frank Sinatra for " High Hopes (Single)" **Elvis Presley for " A Fool Such As I (Single)" * Album of the Year **Frank Sinatra for '' Come Dance with Me!'' **Robert Russell Bennett for ''Victory At Sea, Vol. I'' ** Kiril Kondrashin & ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ...
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Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Presley's sexually provocative performance style, combined with a mix of influences across color lines during a civil rights movement, transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and Cultural impact of Elvis Presley#Danger to American culture, initial controversy. Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi; his family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was 13. He began his music career in 1954 at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on guitar and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, Backbeat (music), backbeat-driven fusion of country music and ...
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Jimmy Driftwood
James Corbitt Morris (June 20, 1907 – July 12, 1998), known professionally as Jimmy Driftwood or Jimmie Driftwood, was an American folk music, folk-style songwriter and musician, most famous for his songs "The Battle of New Orleans (song), The Battle of New Orleans" and "Tennessee Stud". Driftwood wrote more than 6,000 Folk music, folk songs, of which more than 300 were recorded by various musicians. Biography Early life Driftwood was born in Timbo, Arkansas, Timbo, Arkansas, United States on June 20, 1907. His father was folk singer Neal Morris. He is on the album Songs of the Ozarks. Driftwood learned to play the guitar at a young age on his grandfather's homemade instrument. Driftwood used that unique guitar throughout his career and noted that its neck was made from a fence rail, its sides from an old ox yoke, and the head and bottom from the headboard of his grandmother's bed. This homemade instrument produced a pleasant, distinctive, resonant sound. Driftwood attende ...
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Grammy Award For Song Of The Year
The Grammy Award for Song of the Year is an honor presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards. The Song of the Year award is one of the four most prestigious categories at the awards (alongside Best New Artist, Record of the Year and Album of the Year), presented annually since the 1st Grammy Awards in 1959. According to the 54th Grammy Awards description guide, the award is presented: If a winning song contains samples or interpolations of existing material, the publisher and songwriter(s) of the original song(s) can apply for a Winners Certificate. Song of the Year is related to but is conceptually different from Record of the Year or Album of the Year: * Song of the Year is awarded for a single or for one track from an album. This award goes to the songwriter who actually wrote the lyrics and/or melodies to the song. "Song" in this context means the song as composed, not its recording. * Record of ...
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Belafonte At Carnegie Hall
''Belafonte at Carnegie Hall'' is a live double album by Harry Belafonte issued by RCA Victor. It is the first of two Belafonte Carnegie Hall albums, and was recorded on April 19 and April 20, 1959. The concerts were benefits for The New Lincoln School and Wiltwyck School, respectively. The album stayed on the charts for over three years. The album was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1959 Grammy Awards. Critical reception ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'' wrote that the album captured "a spectacular live performance." CD track listing The original RCA CD reissue on a single disc, omitted four tracks. There have been several double disc releases since, that include all tracks (see LP track listing). #"Introduction/Darlin' Cora" – 3:59 #"Sylvie" – 4:54 #"Cotton Fields" – 4:18 #" John Henry" – 5:11 #" The Marching Saints" – 2:50 #" The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" – 3:40 #"Jamaica Farewell" – 5:10 #" Mama Look a Boo Boo" – 5:24 #"Come Back Liza" – 3:06 #" M ...
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Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte ( ; born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023) was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte's career breakthrough album ''Calypso (album), Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP album, LP by a single artist. Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)", "Jamaica Farewell", and "Mary's Boy Child". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk music, folk, gospel music, gospel, show tunes, and Great American Songbook, American standards. He also starred in films such as ''Carmen Jones (film), Carmen Jones'' (1954), ''Island in the Sun (film), Island in the Sun'' (1957), ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959), ''Buck and the Preacher'' (1972), and ''Uptown Saturday Night'' (1974). He made his final feature film appearance in Spike Lee's ''Bl ...
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The Music From Peter Gunn
''The Music from Peter Gunn'' is a soundtrack album to the TV series ''Peter Gunn'', composed and conducted by Henry Mancini, and released in January 1959 on RCA Victor. It was the first album ever to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1959. The album was followed by ''More Music from Peter Gunn'', released on RCA Victor in July 1959. In 1998 the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The opening theme music is notable for its combination of jazz orchestration with a straightforward rock 'n roll beat. In his autobiography ''Did They Mention the Music?'' Mancini stated: The ''Peter Gunn'' title theme actually derives more from rock and roll than from jazz. I used guitar and piano in unison, playing what is known in music as an ostinato, which means obstinate. It was sustained throughout the piece, giving it a sinister effect, with some frightened saxophone sounds and some shouting brass. The piece has one chord throughout and a super-simple top line. ...
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Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His works include the theme and soundtrack for the ''Peter Gunn'' television series as well as the music for ''The Pink Panther'' film series (" The Pink Panther Theme") and " Moon River" from '' Breakfast at Tiffany's''. '' The Music from Peter Gunn'' won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing film scores for the film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the " Love Theme from ''Romeo and Juliet''" spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969. Early lif ...
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Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and Conducting, conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romantic music, Romanticism in Russian classical music. Early influences of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom notable for its song-like melody, melodicism, Music#Expression, expressiveness, dense Counterpoint, contrapuntal textures, and rich Orchestration, orchestral colours. The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoff's compositional output and he used his skills as a performer to fully explore the expressive and technical possibilities of the instrument. Born into a musical family, Rachmaninoff began learning the piano at the age of four. He studied piano and composition at ...
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Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. (July 12, 1934February 27, 2013) was an American pianist. At the age of 23, Cliburn achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 during the Cold War. Cliburn's mother, a piano teacher and an accomplished pianist in her own right, discovered him playing at age three, mimicking one of her students, and arranged for him to start taking lessons. Cliburn developed a rich, round tone and a singing-voice-like phrasing, having been taught from the start to sing each piece. Cliburn toured domestically and overseas. He played for royalty, heads of state, and every US president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama. Early life Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Rildia Bee (''née'' O'Bryan) and Harvey Lavan Cliburn Sr. When he was three, he began taking piano lessons from his mother, who had studied under Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. When Cli ...
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Kirill Kondrashin
Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin (; – 7 March 1981) was a Soviet and Russian conductor. People's Artist of the USSR (1972). Early life Kondrashin was born in Moscow to a family of orchestral musicians. Having spent many hours at rehearsals, he made a firm decision at the age of 14 to become a conductor. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1931 to 1936 under the conductor Boris Khaikin. Kondrashin began conducting in the Young People's Theatre in Moscow in 1931, continuing in the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre three years later. He conducted at the Maly Opera Theatre in Leningrad from 1938 to 1942 and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow from 1943. His performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No.1 attracted the composer's attention and led to the formation of a firm friendship. In 1947, he was awarded the Stalin Prize. Main career In the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, Kondrashin was the conductor for American pianist ...
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Robert Russell Bennett
Robert Russell Bennett (June 15, 1894 – August 18, 1981) was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers.Profile
ibdb.com; accessed May 1, 2008.
In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received special recognizing his orchestrations for Broadway shows. Early in his career, he was often billed as Russell Bennett.


Life and career


Early life

Robert Russell Bennett was born in 1894 to a musical family in