The first Grammys were held: May 4, 1959

image from themoneytimes.com

Frank Sinatra once described Elvis Presley, the man who in 1959 was responsible for nearly half the sales at RCA, as a “deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.” ^TO Apparently the Grammys agreed with Ol’ Blue Eyes. In 28 categories, Sinatra was nominated the most – 12 times. Elvis and his fellow rock musicians, received no nominations. As Variety magazine said, the complete absence of any rock titles was “a demonstrative brushoff to the prevailing trend in the pop field.” ^TO

The Grammy Awards were established in 1958 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. The “Grammy” nickname is short for gramophone. The awards focused on “artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence instead of album sales or chart position.” ^LF “The award itself is a gold gramophone, symbolic of the first home record players, on a black base.” ^LF

525 people from the music industry attended that first ceremony on May 4, 1959 at a banquet ceremony at Los Angeles’ Beverly Hilton Hotel. Shockingly, there was no music on the program. The event was not televised. Paul Weston, the Grammy president, was still lining up presenters during dinner.

700 people filled out ballots. While prognasticators assumed Sinatra would be the big winner of the night, he was nearly shut out, only winning Best Album Cover for Only the Lonely. Instead, the night’s top honors went largely to non-rock-oriented pop titles. Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” won Record and Song of the Year. Henry Mancini’s television soundtrack The Music from Peter Gunn, which had topped the LP chart for 10 weeks, took the prize for Album of the Year. Mancini would become a Grammy regular, winning a total of 20 awards before his death in 1994.

Volare

Some of the other winners of the night included Ella Fitzgerald (Best Female Vocal Performance, Best Individual Jazz Performance) and Count Basie (Best Performance by a Dance Band, Best Jazz Performance Group). Despite Grammy leaders claim that the awards were about “artistic merit,” they handed out three awards to The Chipmunks. Check out a full list of the first year’s winners here.

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Resources and Related Links:

• DMDB Blog: Why the Grammys Are Hard to Take Seriously (2/12/2012)
• DMDB Blog: The Grammy Song and Record of the Year Winners Ranked (1/19/2012)
• DMDB Blog: Past Album-of-the-Year Grammy Winners Ranked and Revisited (12/4/2011)
• Grammy.com
• Grammy.com – first year’s winners
• Life123.com: A Brief Grammy History by Jennifer Flaten
• ^TO Thomas O’Neil The Grammys: The Ultimate, Unofficial Guide to Music’s Highest Honor (1993). Perigree Books: New York, NY. Pages 23-31.

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Domenico Modugno hit #1 with “Volare”

Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blue) Domenico Modugno

Writer(s): Franco Migliacci, Domenico Modugno, Mitchell Parish (see lyrics here) First Charted: July 7, 1958 Peak: 15 US, 16 CB, 16 HR, 10 UK, 17 AU, 4 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, -- UK, 5.0 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 5.0 radio, 27.5 video, 41.59 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: “Volare (Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blue)” translates as “To Fly (In the Blue Painted Sky).” This song definitely flew. It soared to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for five non-consecutive weeks and was named the magazine’s song of the year. It was the first foreign-language song to top the chart and also the first #1 written or co-written by its singer. SF It is the only record to originate in Italy and top the American charts. FB At the very first Grammy awards, the song took home the prizes for Record and Song of the Year, making it the only foreign-language recording to accomplish this feat. WK Modugno performed the song for the first time on January 31, 1958 with Johnny Dorelli for the Sanremo Music Festival. Italian singers characteristically stood with their arms on their chests, not moving on stage. Modugno, however, opened up his arms as if he was going to fly. His performance “is now considered to be the event that changed the history of Italian music.” WK It got the song selected ast the Italian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1958. It took third place, but with combined sales of all versions of the song topping 22 million worldwide, it has become one of the all-time most popular entries in the contest. WK The song came about when Franco Migliacci was waiting for Domenico Modugno to show up for a planned trip to the sea. Migliacci started drinking wine and fell asleep. When he woke up, he looked at reproductions of two Marc Chagall paintings on his wall. He was inspired by them and some vivid dreams to write a song about a man who dreams of painting himself blue and being able to fly. WK Bob Dylan described it as “a whimsical song” that is “zooming and whizzing…it gets up to speed and barges into the sun, ricochets off the stars, smokes pipe dreams and blasts into cloud cuckoo land.” BD Mitchell Parish wrote English lyrics for the song, as did Gracie Fields. The song has also been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Finnish, and Portuguese. WK The Ames Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Chet Atkins, David Bowie, Petula Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Connie Francis, Dean Martin, the McGuire Sisters, the Platters, Cliff Richard, Barry White, and Frank Zappa have all covered the song. WK Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Domenico Modugno FB Fred Bronson (2003). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (5th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 41. BD Bob Dylan (2022). The Philosophy of Modern Song. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. Pages 153-4. SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia First posted 3/13/2021; last updated 10/23/2022.