Doors, Grateful Dead to get honorary Grammys

Last Updated: Thursday, December 21, 2006 | 1:27 PM ET

CBC Arts

Rock groups The Doors and The Grateful Dead and opera singer Maria Callas are among seven recording artists selected to receive Grammy Awards for lifetime achievement.

Folk singer Joan Baez, jazz great Ornette Coleman, country singer Bob Wills and soul group Booker T. & The MGs are also to be honoured.

The Doors (shown in an undated photo from left, John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison) will be recognized with a Grammy lifetime achievement award.
(Associated Press)

The lifetime achievement Grammys, awarded by the U.S. Recording Academy's board of trustees, are usually given to musicians who were overlooked at the peak of their careers.

Steve Cropper, guitarist with Booker T & The MGs, won a 1969 Grammy for co-writing Otis Redding's (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay, but none of the others have won the award.

The soul group, a formidable house band for Memphis-based Stax Records, performed with artists such as Redding and Wilson Pickett, but also had hits of their own with Green Onions and Time is Tight.

Baez, a giant of 1960s folk scene, was nominated six times without winning. She is known for hits such as Diamonds and Rust and Love is Just Four-letter Word.

Saxophonist Coleman, now 76, has never been nominated for a Grammy.  Wills and his Texas Playboys made Western swing popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Grateful Dead, whose guitarist Jerry Garcia died in 1995, and The Doors, led by rock legend Jim Morrison who died in 1971, were among the most influential rock bands of the 1960s.

American-born Callas had a voice with a remarkable range but had a true diva temperament that did little to detract from her celebrity status.

The honorary Grammys will be awarded during a ceremony in Los Angeles ahead of the main Grammys gala on Feb. 11.

Estelle Axton, co-founder of Stax Records, the Memphis soul label that has just been resurrected, will receive the Trustees Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the industry in a non-performing category.

Multiple award-winning musical composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim and recording engineer Cosimo Matassa also will receive Trustees Awards.