The Recording Academy To Honor Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers

Charley Pride

Charley Pride and Jimmie Rodgers are among this year’s recipients of The Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Three-time Grammy winner Pride is considered the first African-American star in country music, thanks to hits including “All I Have To Offer You (Is Me),” “(I’m So) Afraid of Losing You Again,” “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” and “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin.'”

The late Jimmie Rodgers is widely regarded as the Father of Country Music. He was discovered in 1927, at the famed Bristol Sessions, by another of this year’s Recording Academy honorees: Ralph Peer.

Peer will receive a Trustees Award, which celebrates areas other than performance. Peer recorded the first blues record, and first country records, by Rodgers and the original Carter family.

Other Lifetime Achievement Awards will go to gospel singer Shirley Caesar, jazz innovator Ahmad Jamal, the High Priestess of Soul Nina Simone, Sly Stone of Sly & The Family Stone, and influential rock band the Velvet Underground.

Additional Trustees Awards will go to Philadelphia Soul songwriter/producer Thom Bell; and legendary executive Mo Ostin, who shepherded the careers of Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, Prince, and Neil Young.

Alan Dower Blumlein will receive the Technical Grammy Award posthumously. With 128 patents, his most noteworthy invention was the stereo in 1931.

These honors comprise the The Recording Academy’s 2017 Special Merit Awards.