Disco trailblazer Donna Summer, country-music queen Tammy Wynette, pioneering gangsta rap group N.W.A. and performance artist-turned-sonic-maverick Laurie Anderson are among the Recording Academy's 2024 Special Merit Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award recipients.
They will be celebrated at an afternoon ceremony in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, the day before this year's Grammy Awards take place. The other 2024 lifetime achievement honorees being feted by the Recording Academy — under whose auspices the Grammys are presented — include Motown singing great Gladys Knight and the Clark Sisters, who are the top-selling female vocal group in gospel-music history.
"The Academy is honored to pay tribute to this year's Special Merit Award recipients — a remarkable group of creators and industry professionals whose impact resonates with generations worldwide," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason said in a statement released Friday.
"Their contributions to music span genres, backgrounds and crafts, reflecting the rich diversity that fuels our creative community. We look forward to honoring these music industry trailblazers next month as part of our week-long celebration leading up to Music's Biggest Night."
Six other awards will be presented at the private, nontelevised Special Merit ceremony, which will be held at Los Angeles' historic Wilshire Ebbell Theatre.
Trustees Awards will go to hip-hop godfather DJ Kool Herc, veteran entertainment attorney Joel Katz, and producer and manager Peter Asher, who helped guide the careers of Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor — and who achieved pop music success of his own in the 1960s as half of the chart-topping English duo Peter & Gordon.
This year's technical honorees are Tom Kobayashi and Tom Scott, who together launched the Entertainment Digital Network, or EDnet, which uses fiber-optic networks to quickly send high-quality video and audio over great distances.
The Feb. 3 ceremony will also include the presentation of the best song for social change award, a new category that debuted last year. The 2024 recipients — for the inspirational song "Refugees" — are K'naan, Steve McEwan and Gerald Eaton.
