By Paulette Weiss
above photo: Carlos Santana, accompanied by Pop Music Editor Weiss, displays the first CBS Records International Crystal Globe Award
AWARD SEASON
Din you know that: (1) The Chipmunks, that group of recorded rodents with the tiny, high-pitched voices (created by Ross Bagdasarian, a.k.a. David Seville), have won more Grammys than Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Leopold Stokowski, or Peggy Lee? (2) The most Grammys ever (twenty) have been collected by Henry Mancini? The Beatles got only four. (3) The late Elvis Presley, the man who gave birth to rock with a roll of his pelvis, won just two Grammys, both for albums of religious music? Such statistics must cause us to ponder the purpose and the significance of music-industry awards. Once the ground swell of opinion has crested and the presentations have been made, are they even comprehensible? Well, maybe. The Grammy (the award of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) may be the most visible of music-industry awards, but there are hundreds of others. They all begin making their presence known about this time of the year. Like the racket of insects at the end of a country day, the slap-slap of backs being patted fills media-land as the year draws to a close. Here are a few awards that you may not have heard of before.
Among the newest are the first annual North American Rock Radio Awards, to be presented by the DIR Broadcasting Company in a two-hour broadcast on November 24. DIR, which produces the King Biscuit Flower Hour and other rock-oriented FM radio pro grams, claims that rock's primary stage is radio, and that although a rock artist's success may be measured in sales of records and con cert tickets, his stardom is launched on the airwaves and will remain firmest there. This seems plausible to me. Peter Frampton and eye-popping Heart may appear on the TV talk-show circuit till the cows come home, and they may even make a film (as Frampton has--Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club), but unless, like Sonny and Cher, they achieve a crossover to prime-time video they are stars chiefly on radio.
Working on this assumption, DIR will give FM fans a chance to vote for their 1977 favorites in eight categories: best group, singer/ songwriter, male and female singer, debut al bum, album, song, and single record. The nominees will be selected by the program di rectors of the 250 DIR affiliate stations and will appear on ballots available only in People magazine, Rolling Stone, and DIR's newsletter Blast from the Biscuit. The first two publications seem odd choices if the awards are actually to represent the preferences of FM listeners; ballots made available through individual radio stations would seem more to the point. The premise, though, is that the purchase price of the magazine will curb bal lot stuffing. Fine-but let's face it: no matter how it's done, this will be only one more rock popularity poll in the guise of a meaningful award, the results both predictable and redundant. Public-approval head counts are perhaps interesting, but they don't necessarily reflect the real merits of performers.
-------- Three Grammys?!
DIR is not the only newcomer to jump into the award business. Following Downbeat's well-established lead (with the Downbeat Jazz Poll, which really says what it is), Rolling Stone and scads of other music publications have created their own annual reader and/or staff polls and awards. Now Billboard, the music-trade magazine, and TV producer Burt Sugarman (of Midnight Special) are jointly planning a major new international pop-awards extravaganza based on Billboard's sales charts. The show, like the Academy of Country Music presentations and Don Kirshner's Rock Awards, will be broadcast on TV.
The most common industry trophies are the gold and platinum discs (for album sales of 500,000 and 1,000,000, respectively) presented every hour on the hour (or so it seems lately) by the Recording Industry Association of America. The RIAA certifies these figures through an independent public accounting firm, so we can have complete faith in the ac curacy of the count. But it's the dollars, not necessarily talent or artistic accomplishment, that win this award.
Record companies of course delight in these ceremonies honoring commercial success and often create new ones for their artists. And so CBS Records International has come up with its own Crystal Globe award for sales of five million records or more outside the U.S. Carlos Santana accepted the first last March, and Art Garfunkel accepted the second (for Paul Simon and himself) in August.
But these are all essentially popularity polls (as reflected by sales), often influenced as much (more?) by an artist's baby blues as by his musical chops. Perhaps only with magazine staff and critics awards do we begin to approach a real concern with musical excellence apart from sales and air exposure. From my own experience with STEREO REVIEW'S Record of the Year Awards (eleven years old this coming February), I can attest that the columnists and reviewers use their knowledge, experience, and ears to assess a musician's artistic achievements without bothering to check how the entry did on the charts.
The best known of all music accolades is still that old Grammy. Only active members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences vote for nominees in an eligibility year that runs from October to September.
Despite the impressive credentials of NARAS members, the hoopla attending the televised presentation edges the Grammy awards suspiciously close to the popularity polls in atmosphere, and there is no ignoring the grim competitiveness of the record companies jockeying for their share of the booty. Two other au gust bodies, ASCAP and BMI, frequently re ward achievements in pop music, and several respected pop awards come from areas out side the industry proper (in the theater we have Tonys for show scores, in T V there are Emmys for television scores, and in film there are Oscars for movie scores).
FOR every man there's a woman (that got an award of some sort, didn't it?), and for every musical artist there seems to be some kind of award, but to take care of the few backs that might otherwise go un-patted after all those globes, statuettes, plaques, and cash sums have been laid on, I offer the following:
The Quote of the Year award. This year's chief contender is Lou Reed for "Money can't buy you love, but it can buy you a Cadillac so you can ride around and look for it." The What the Cluck? award. No contest here: it goes to the Henhouse Five Plus Too (actually Ray Stevens) for their moving rendition of Glenn Miller's In the Mood done entirely in chicken clucks.
The Terrific Tush award. It will probably be split this year between Barbra Streisand (“Superman") and Ellen Michaels, the sexy Salsoul ("Nice 'n' Nasty") lady.
Have we left anybody out?
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Also see: GOING ON RECORD; JAMES GOODFRIEND