Feb 08 2009
Gore’s Book Wins Grammy
Really. It’s true. Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, won Category 79–Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling)–within Field 19 (Spoken Word) of the 51st Grammy Awards Sunday.
However, Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon and Blair Underwood, who did the voiceover work on the album, will take home the trophies. There were 110 Grammys presented today, albeit only 10 during the 210-minute televised ceremony, so it’s understandable if you missed the news.
Politicians and politics have often won the Best Spoken Word Grammy, which is an original award category. In 1959, Carl Sandburg narrated his book, A Lincoln Portrait, about the 16th U.S. President. In 1960, Robert Bialek produced the winning album, FDR Speaks, a compilation of Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches.
John Kennedy was the subject of the 1964 and 1965 winners. The BBC’s famous show, That Was The Week That Was, memorized the slain leader in its BBC Tribute to John F. Kennedy in 1964. The next year, Goddard Lieberson produced John F. Kennedy-As We Remember Him.
Martin Luther King Jr. won a posthumous award in 1970 for his album, Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam. Great American Documents, narrated by Helen Hayes, Henry Fonda, James Earl Jones and Orson Welles, won in 1976.
Abraham Lincoln was the winning subject again in 1983, when William Warfield narrated his book, Copland: A Lincoln Portrait. Ben Kingsley won the Grammy in 1984 for narrating The Words of Gandhi. Kingsley also won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in the title role of “Gandhi.”
Jesse Jackson won the 1988 award for his album of speeches. Ken Burns took home the 1991 Grammy for his audiobook, The Civil War.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Robert O’Keefe earned the 1992 Grammy for their album, What You Can Do to Avoid AIDS. Hillary Clinton’s It Takes A Village won the 1996 statuette. LeVar Burton claimed the 1999 award for narrating The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Before claiming a U.S. Senate seat in 2008, Al Franken won a Comedy Grammy (a separate category) in 1996 for Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and a Spoken Word Grammy in 2003 for Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
Bill Clinton won in 2004 for the audio version of his autobiography, My Life. Jimmy Carter won in 2006 for narrating Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.
Finally, Barack Obama has two Grammys. He won in 2005 for Dreams from My Father and in 2007 for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.
