The first Grammy Awards ceremony was held on May 4, 1959, to honor the musical accomplishments by performers for the year 1958. Following the 2011 ceremony, NARAS overhauled many Grammy Award categories for 2012. The 58th Grammy Awards were held on February 15, 2016, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
The Grammys had their origin in the Hollywood Walk of Fame project in the 1950s. As the recording executives chosen for the Walk of Fame committee worked at compiling a list of important recording industry people who might qualify for a Walk of Fame star, they realized there were many more people who were leaders in their business who would never earn a star on Hollywood Boulevard. The music executives decided to rectify this by creating an award given by their industry similar to the Oscars and the Emmys. This was the beginning of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. After it was decided to create such an award, there was still a question of what to call it; one working title was the Eddie, to honor the inventor of the phonograph, Thomas Edison. They finally settled on using the name of the invention of Emile Berliner, the gramophone, for the awards, which were first given for the year 1958.
The first award ceremony was held simultaneously in two locations on May 4, 1959 - Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills California, and Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City,[6] and 28 Grammys were awarded. The number of awards given grew and fluctuated over the years with categories added and removed, at one time reaching over 100. The second Grammy Awards, also held in 1959, was the first ceremony to be televised,[8] but the ceremony was not aired live until the 13th Annual Grammy Awards in 1971.
The gold-plated trophies, each depicting a gilded gramophone, are made and assembled by hand by Billings Artworks in Ridgway, Colorado. In 1990 the original Grammy design was revamped, changing the traditional soft lead for a stronger alloy less prone to damage, making the trophy bigger and grander. The trophies with the recipient's name engraved on them are not available until after the award announcements, so "stunt" trophies are re-used each year for the broadcast. By February 2009, 7,578 Grammy trophies had been awarded.
The "General Field" are four awards which are not restricted by genre.
- Album of the Year is awarded to the performer and the production team of a full album.
- Record of the Year is awarded to the performer and the production team of a single song.
- Song of the Year is awarded to the writer(s)/composer(s) of a single song.
- Best New Artist is awarded to a promising breakthrough performer who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording that establishes the public identity of that artist (which is not necessarily their first proper release).
Because of the large number of award categories (78 in 2012, 81 in 2013 and 82 in 2014), and the desire to feature several performances by various artists, only the ones with the most popular interest - typically about 10 to 12, including the four General Field categories and one or two categories in the most popular music genres (i.e. pop, rock, country, rap) - are presented directly at the televised award ceremony. The many other Grammy trophies are presented in a pre-telecast 'Premiere Ceremony' earlier in the afternoon before the Grammy Awards telecast.
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