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2005 Special Merit Honorees Announced Awards honor lifelong contributions to the music industry GRAMMY.com The Recording Academy announced the 2005 Special Merit Award recipients today. Recording artists Eddy Arnold, Art Blakey, the original members of the Carter Family, Morton Gould, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jelly Roll Morton, Pinetop Perkins, and the Staple Singers will receive The Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. Hoagy Carmichael, Don Cornelius, Alfred Lion, and Dr. Billy Taylor will be honored with the Academy Trustees Award. Phil Ramone and JBL Professional have been named recipients of the Technical GRAMMY Award. The Lifetime Achievement Award honors lifelong artistic contributions to the recording medium while the Trustees Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the industry in a non-performing capacity. Both awards are decided by vote of The Recording Academy's National Trustees. Technical GRAMMY Award recipients are determined by vote of the members of the Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing and the Academy's Trustees. The award is presented to individuals and/or companies who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. "The Lifetime Achievement, Trustees and Technical GRAMMY Awards recognize music people who have made a lasting contribution to culture around the world," said Neil Portnow, President of The Recording Academy. "These profoundly inspiring figures are being honored as legendary performers and archetypal musicians, cultural ambassadors, and technical visionaries. Their outstanding accomplishments and passion for their craft have created a timeless legacy that has positively affected multiple generations, and will continue to influence generations to come." Formal acknowledgment of these Special Merit Awards will be made at a new elite ceremony during GRAMMY Week on Feb. 12, as well as during the 47th Annual GRAMMY Awards telecast. For more information about the honorees, please visit the official press release Web page.

I picked up "Don't Smoke in Bed" a while back, but it never really held my attention.

From the Chicago Sun Times Blues guitarist, singer Frank 'Son' Seals dies at 62 December 22, 2004 BY JEFF JOHNSON Staff Reporter Advertisement Frank "Son" Seals played the blues with intensity. He lived them with a vengeance. The gruff-voiced, hard-edged Chicago blues guitarist-vocalist, who looked like a grizzly bear and reminded good friends of a teddy bear with his sly, self-deprecating humor, died Monday at age 62 of complications of diabetes. Mr. Seals' last 10 years were marked by misfortunes. His left leg was amputated below the knee in 1999 because of diabetes. He was hospitalized frequently for the disease in the last two years, and had taken insulin since the 1970s. Two years before the amputation, he was shot in the jaw by an ex-wife as he slept, forcing months of reconstructive surgery. More recently his motor home was destroyed by fire after a show in Miami, and his custom-made guitar was stolen. "The guy faced the most unbelievably life-shattering experiences, and you never heard him complain about it," said Dan Rabinovitz, a trumpet player in Mr. Seals' band from 1990-97 and a former Cook County assistant state's attorney now practicing law in Boston. Started professionally at 12 "Son came from a background where once you took the bandstand, the only thing that mattered was the music," Rabinovitz said. "No matter what else was going on in his life or the lives of anyone else in the group, that was the priority. That tradition was passed on from Albert King and Earl Hooker and the others he shared the bandstand with over the years." As the youngest of Jim Seals' 13 children, Frank Seals learned about the blues firsthand at his daddy's juke joint in Osceola, Ark. He was called "Little Son" in his hometown to distinguish him from "Son," his dad. Mr. Seals began playing professionally at age 12, first on the drums and soon after on guitar. While still in his teens, he toured as a drummer with Hooker and later with King, one of his primary influences. By the time he moved to Chicago in 1971, Mr. Seals had mastered many of King's guitar riffs. He took over Hound Dog Taylor's regular gigs at the Expressway Lounge on the South Side when Taylor's debut album for Chicago's Alligator Records took off and Taylor hit the road. Alligator went on to record "The Son Seals Blues Band" in 1973 and seven other Seals albums, as well as a 2002 "Deluxe Edition" compilation. He left the label for Telarc in 2000, when he recorded "Lettin' Go," his last studio album. 'It came from his heart' Mr. Seals played guitar "like his life depended on it," said Bruce Iglauer, Alligator founder and president. "Part of it was his sheer intensity. He didn't really play the guitar, he attacked it. And that's the way he approached his vocals, too. He didn't ask you to listen, he bullied you into it." Iglauer recalled that Mr. Seals was little-known to blues audiences when he arrived in Chicago. "When I first saw him, he was just playing little South Side joints," he said. He was one of those 50 cents or a dollar [cover charge] guys. He was playing with a borrowed guitar and amp. He recorded the first album for Alligator on a Norma, the Montgomery Ward's guitar brand, and he did the second on a Slivertone from Sears." Mr. Seals went on to help reshape the Chicago blues, expanding on the traditional Mississippi Delta roots by incorporating hard-rock elements. His raw, "all kill, no fill" style, as Iglauer describes it, found favor with a fan base that was increasingly white and based on the North Side. "Nobody could send a roomful of people over the edge in the midnight hour with a guitar like he could," Rabinovitz said. "When he wanted to throw down, nobody could touch him." Mr. Seals' son Rodney, with whom he was living at the time of his death, said his father's health had been declining for some time, but he never lost his passion for the blues. "Anybody who knew my dad and followed his career of 40 years knew blues was like a second life to him," Seals said. "I just believe that he felt every song he sung. It came from his heart. To be true to what you do, you've got to speak what you feel. That's what he did." Mr. Seals leaves a sister, Katherine Sims of Chicago, and 14 children, none of whom has followed the family blues tradition professionally. Funeral arrangements are set for 11 a.m. Monday at the Alonzo Davis Funeral Home. 305 E. 16th St., Chicago Heights. Visitation is 2-5 p.m. Sunday.

I saw him a number of times when I lived in Chicago ... always put his all into his shows and turned out some great blues albums.

I got the single disc, titled something like "The Complete Master Takes" with about 15+ tracks (I don't have it with me) ... it was on sale at Media Play for $7.99 and I wasn't going to be choosy. Hearing Ellington in a small group like this really gave me a new perspective on his piano playing ... I've got about five or six Ellington CDs, but it's all big band stuff ... except from a couple of magnificent cuts on "... and his mother called him Bill." My next step will probably be "The money jungle," with Ellington, Roach, Mingus, which I see is now offered by BMG.

Way cool ... I went to the "Collection Home" link on that site to see what else they had, and the descriptions indicated Roy Eldridge's trumpet had a "rhinestone-studded" mouthpiece and Don Byas' horn has "a unique octave key in the shape of a snake." Any other players known for "customizing" their instruments?

I recently picked up a copy of "The Great Summit" (on Roulette) with: Louis Armstrong - Trumpet, Vocals Duke Ellington - Piano Barney Bigard - Clarinet Trummy Young - Trombone Mort Herbert - Bass Danny Barcelona - Drums Fantastic, bluesy, emotional, just plain excellent!

Horace Silver: Sister Sadie ... irresistible!

Latest BMG order: Joe Henderson: In n Out Lee Morgan: The Sixth Sense Johnny Griffin: JG James Moody: James Moody Sonny Stitt: Personal Appearance

Brush with greatness (?) story: I recently had the chance to interview Burns about the Jack Johnson film for my job, and I got the feeling that he's really not a jazz fan per se ... it seemed like he liked the music, but was more interested in how the it affected/affects the development of the U.S. I, for one, approached the "Jazz" series as if it were about jazz with some American History thrown into the mix, but I think for Burns his films taken together are about American History with some Jazz (or Baseball or Civil War) thrown into the mix.

Charlie Watts' Live at Fulham Hall features some of the players mentioned here in a big-band setting with a lot of energy. People who haven't heard it shouldn't put this off as some kind of vanity project, it's good music.

If you're looking for a tasty dog you can find at the grocery store, try Best's Kosher Franks.

So Newman sings but doesn't play on this? That seems kind of odd ...

Have you heard Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) do his version of that? One of my faves ... Also, I'm a sucker for "2000 Miles" by the Pretenders.

Mom Breastfeeds Puppy to Protect Baby WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A woman in New Zealand says she is breastfeeding her pet puppy because she wants it to protect her baby daughter as they both grow up. Kura Tumanako told the NZPA news agency Wednesday that she had started breastfeeding the Staffordshire bull terrier pup after her baby stopped taking her milk. "I didn't want to waste it so I gave it to Honey Boy," she said. According to NZPA, Tumanako said she had fed the dog twice a day for the past week but would probably wean it off in about six weeks' time. Her baby, now 2 months old, is on bottled milk. "I wanted to raise it (the pup) with my baby," she said. "I wanted to bring it up with a baby. It will protect her as they grow up," said Tumanako, who lives in Hastings in New Zealand's North Island. "He drinks more than the baby. It doesn't hurt, but it's a little bit ticklish."

I've had "Out to Lunch" for some time, but I've only recently starting really getting into it ... plus, I recently picked up Mal Waldron's disc "The Quest" with Dolphy, and I find both of these spending a lot of time in my CD player lately ... can people suggest a next Dolphy disc or two that is similar to these? I like it that music is challenging, but not too ... "free" I guess.

Already found that through "make out with your girlfriend" What's really telling is the fact that all her responses must have been "pre-programmed," so whoever set up the site KNEW in advance that people would ask to see those two get friendly ... not that there's anything wrong with that. But it does say something about us!

So, you're against jazz players who "quote" other artists in their solos?

Roger Clemens just won the Cy Young Award!

I really like his "All-Night Sessions" ...

NEA names seven Jazz Masters By BILL WHITE SPECIAL TO THE [sEATTLE] POST-INTELLIGENCER The National Endowment for the Arts came to town yesterday to name big band leader Artie Shaw, vocalist Shirley Horn, guitarist Kenny Burrell, clarinetist/composer Paquito D'Rivera, keyboardist Jimmy Smith, trombonist/arranger Slide Hampton and promoter George Wein as its 2005 Jazz Masters. NEA Chairman Dana Gioia announced the honorees yesterday afternoon at a gala event at On the Boards that featured a performance by Jazz Master Benny Golson with the Garfield High School Jazz Band. Gioia said the awards were presented in Seattle because it's "important to spread around our events in the places they belong. With three of our past masters performing at the Earshot Jazz Festival this year, Seattle seemed the right place to name next year's recipients." The seven new Jazz Masters will receive their awards in January at a gala concert held in Long Beach, Calif., during the annual convention of the International Association for Jazz Education. Since 1982, the NEA has honored 80 musicians and jazz advocates as Jazz Masters, an honor that includes a one-time fellowship of $25,000. Shaw rose to prominence in the 1930s as a swing band leader, master clarinetist and boundary-crossing artist, who infused jazz with the influences of modern European composers. Burrell pioneered the guitar-led trio with bass and drums in the late 1950s. Known for his harmonic creativity, lush tones and lyricism on the guitar, he is also a prolific and highly regarded composer. D'Rivera is celebrated both for his artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements as a classical composer. Horn, who began leading her own group in the mid-1950s and in 1960 recorded her first album, "Embers and Ashes," which established her reputation as an exceptional and sensitive jazz vocalist. A charismatic figure, master arranger and formidable trombonist, Hampton holds a place of distinction in the jazz tradition. His distinguished career spans decades in the evolution of jazz. Smith raised the Hammond B3 organ from a novelty instrument in jazz to primary status. Wein is renowned for his work in organizing and booking music festivals and in particular for creating the Newport Jazz Festival, an event that in the words of the late jazz critic Leonard Feather started the "festival era."

Stop paying attention to the election results ... I originally posted that "tongue-in-cheek," but I really find that if I go cold turkey and stop listening to music for day or three I'm soon ready for something to take my mind off of the world's various ills and the next thing I know I'm listening to jazz again.

... we're a happy family!

UK relaunches WWII staple Spam Wednesday, November 3, 2004 Posted: 0200 GMT (1000 HKT) LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Spam, the luncheon meat which valiantly sustained Britain's war effort only to suffer so cruelly at the hands of Monty Python, is being relaunched in the UK. A £2 million campaign will feature the first TV adverts for the brand, portraying it as quintessentially British despite the fact it was invented in America and is now largely produced in Denmark. "It celebrates all things British from camping to the great British institution of the pantomime," Spam said of the adverts. "With the new ad we will remind lapsed users about the delicious taste of Spam whilst raising awareness amongst new users," said senior brand manager, Marianne Pollock. Spam estimates the brand is worth £13.3 million in the UK, where sales are growing 9.7 percent a year against a declining market for canned meat. First produced in 1937 by Hormel Foods Corp of the United States, Spam became an institution during World War II when it was rammed into square cans to save shipping space. Hormel shipped 15 million cans of food to soldiers each week, and Soviet Union leader Nikita Khrushchev credited Spam with saving the Russian army from starvation, the firm says on its Web site www.spam.com. The chopped meat gave its name to junk e-mail because of a sketch by British comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus in which singing Vikings kept drowning out a waitress offering dishes such as spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam.