*Booker T. & The MG's and saxophone great Ornette Coleman are among the recipients of the 2007 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award presented by The Recording Academy.
Other artists receiving the prestigious honor include Joan Baez, Maria Callas, the Doors, the Grateful Dead and Bob Wills. Estelle Axton, Cosimo Matassa and Stephen Sondheim will be honored with The Academy's Trustees Award, while David M. Smith and Yamaha Corporation have been named recipients of the Technical Grammy Award.
"This year's group of accomplished honorees are as diverse as they are influential as creators of the most renowned and prominent recordings in the world," said Recording Academy President Neil Portnow. "Their contributions exemplify the highest artistic and technical standards that have positively affected the music industry and music fans."
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 Board of Trustees.
• As the house band at Stax Records in Memphis, Booker T. & The MG's (Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Al Jackson, Booker T. Jones, and Lewie Steinberg) had tight, impeccable grooves that can be heard on classic hits by Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Carla Thomas, to name a few. They also were one of the top instrumental outfits of the rock era, recording classics including "Green Onions," "Time Is Tight," and "Hang 'Em High." As a band that featured two blacks and two whites playing as a cohesive group in the highly-charged south of the '60s, they set an example of how music can transcend social ills.
• One of the most notable figures in jazz history, American jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman is considered one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the '60s. He has influenced virtually every saxophonist of a modern disposition and nearly every jazz musician of the following generation. Coleman's timbre is one of the most easily recognized in jazz: his keening, crying sound draws heavily on the blues. From the beginning, his music and playing were unorthodox, and his sense of harmony and chord were not as rigid as most swing music or bebop performers and were easily changed and often implied. His growing reputation placed him at the forefront of jazz innovation, and free jazz was soon considered a new genre.