November 29
TV TUNES DAY
1959 The Grammy Awards were shown on network television for the first time on this night in 1959. (It was actually the second year of the Grammy Awards.)
Mack the Knife won Record of the Year and Bobby Darin, who belted it out, was Best New Artist of the Year. Frank Sinatra won Album of the Year for Come Dance with Me. Jimmy Driftwood penned the Song of the Year: The Battle of New Orleans, which also won Country and Western Performance of the Year honors for Johnny Horton.
The Best Folk Performance of the Year went to The Kingston Trio for their ...at Large album. The Best Performance by a Top 40 Artist was Nat King Cole’s Midnight Flyer and the Grammy for Best Comedy Performance, Musical went to Homer & Jethro for their immortal The Battle of Kookamonga.
The great Duke Ellington received the 1959 Grammy for Best Performance by a Dance Band this night for his Anatomy of a Murder movie sound track. Ellington won another Grammy and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Science’s Lifetime Achievement Award six years later.
It was only appropriate that the Grammy Awards would be shown annually on television since the ‘new medium’ of TV would supply much-nominated music over the years and would also spotlight performers. Little did the Academy know what it started ... and that someday, it would award Grammys for music videos as seen on MTV.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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