Rock band The Doors in the late 1960s.
Influential rock bands The Doors and the Grateful Dead will receive lifetime achievement Grammy Awards next year, along with jazz saxophone player Ornette Coleman and the late opera singer Maria Callas, organisers said on Tuesday.
Other honourees include folk singer Joan Baez, soul musicians Booker T. & the
MG's, and late country music icon Bob Wills. The statuettes will be handed out during a ceremony leading up to the main Grammy Awards, which take place in Los Angeles on Feb. 11.
The honorary awards generally allow organisers of the music industry's most prestigious event to give belated recognition to acts who were snubbed during their heyday. The only act to win a competitive Grammy was Booker T. & the MG's, in 1995. The group's guitarist, Steve Cropper, won a 1969 award for co-writing Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay."
Coleman, 76, just received the first Grammy nomination of his career for his first album in 10 years. Baez has received six nominations, but no trophies.
The honours are too late for some recipients. Doors singer Jim Morrison died in 1971, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia in 1995, Callas in 1977, and Wills in 1975. Booker T & the MG's drummer Al Jackson, Jr. also died in 1975, murdered by an unknown assailant in his Memphis home.
- REUTERS
