In 1971, Elvis Presley was only 36 years old, yet the Recording Academy had already decided his contribution to recorded music deserved one of its highest honors.
The award we now know as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award was then called the Bing Crosby Award, named after its first recipient. Elvis became only the sixth artist to receive it.
The five recipients before him were an extraordinary group: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Irving Berlin.
Elvis received the honor during his 1971 Las Vegas engagement, with Graceland recording that it was presented to him in his dressing room. The Academy recognized his artistic creativity and the enormous influence his recordings had already had on performers and listeners.
That age makes the honor especially striking.
Elvis had released “That’s All Right” only 17 years earlier, yet by 36 his impact was already being treated as historic.
Video 1 Link: Elvis Presley – “How Great Thou Art”
Elvis’s Grammy history had an unusual twist too. His three competitive Grammy wins were all for gospel music, beginning with How Great Thou Art.
And Elvis was nowhere near finished in 1971.
He would still perform his historic Madison Square Garden concerts in 1972, broadcast Aloha from Hawaii in 1973 and continue touring until 1977.
Most artists receive lifetime honors near the end of a long career. Elvis Presley received his at 36 because the music industry already knew he had changed popular music forever.