Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie Were the First Black Artists to Win GRAMMYs in 1959
Basie would go on to win nine GRAMMYs in his career, while Fitzgerald earned 14, including a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Though the first annual GRAMMY Awards in 1959 handed out just 28 awards, ceremonies took place in both Beverly Hills and New York City. The dual celebration tradition was carried on for several years.
That debut year, all eyes were on Frank Sinatra and his six nominations, but he would surprisingly take home just a single statue for art-directing his album “Only the Lonely.”
Black recording artists surprisingly fared better: Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie each won two GRAMMYs in the Jazz and Pop fields. Basie would go on to win nine GRAMMYs in his career, while Fitzgerald earned 14, including a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Black artists have since dominated several categories in the GRAMMY Awards record books. To date, Quincy Jones tops the list of most wins by a producer and has the second most wins by any male artist with 27 awards. Stevie Wonder (22 awards), Jay-Z (21 awards), and Kanye West (21 awards) all sit in the latter list’s top eight. Beyoncé’s 20 wins make her the second top GRAMMY-earning female, followed by Aretha Franklin (18 awards), Alicia Keys (14 awards), Fitzgerald, Leontyne Price (13 awards), Shirley Caesar (11 awards), Chaka Khan, and CeCe Winans (10 awards each).
The GRAMMYs haven’t been praised for its treatment of all genres, though. Most notably, hip-hop struggled to be recognized as a field by the awards show, which finally happened in 1989, but a reluctance to televise it led to a boycott that year by the GRAMMYs’ first-ever rap winners, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, aka Will Smith. Public Enemy would follow suit for similar reasons in 1991. Finally, in 1999, Lauryn Hill made history by making the first hip-hop album to earn five GRAMMYs, including the coveted Album of the Year, for “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” an event that had to be televised.
