A Brief History
On May 4, 1959, the first ever Grammy music awards were held, with no category for rock and roll despite the fact that this new type of music had already long taken the country by storm.
Digging Deeper
The big winners with 2 Grammys apiece were: Ella Fitzgerald (Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female and Best Jazz Performance by an Individual, for compilations of the Irving Berlin songbook and the Duke Ellington songbook, respectively); Henri Mancini (Best Arrangement and Album of the Year, both for The Music from Peter Gunn); Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., better known by his stage persona of David Seville, (Best Comedy Performance and Best Recording for Children, both for “The Chipmunk Song”); and Domenico Modugno (Song of the Year and Record of the Year for “Volare“).
The only award in the Best Country and Western Performance category went to The Kingston Trio for their hit “Tom Dooley.” Other major categories included Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Male, which was won by Perry Como for “Catch a Falling Star,” and Best Performance by a Vocal Group or Chorus, which was won by Keely Smith and Louis Prima for “That Old Black Magic.”
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Lee, Lake. History of the Grammys: The Grammy Awards Facts and Tidbits of Knowledge (RPLL.0454). Riverly Press, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Hudconja of the Grammy Museum Experience at the Prudential Center in Newark, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You can also watch a video version of this article on YouTube.
