Grammy Award For Best Spoken Word Album
The Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album has been awarded since 1959. The award had several minor name changes:
- In 1959 the award was known as Best Performance, Documentary or Spoken Word
- From 1960 to 1961 it was awarded as Best Performance - Documentary or Spoken Word (other than comedy)
- From 1962 to 1963 it was awarded as Best Documentary or Spoken Word Recording (other than comedy)
- From 1964 to 1965 it was awarded as Best Documentary, Spoken Word or Drama Recording (other than comedy)
- In 1966 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Drama Recording
- From 1967 to 1968 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording
- From 1969 to 1979 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word Recording
- From 1980 to 1983 it returned to the title of Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama Recording
- From 1984 to 1991 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording
- From 1992 to 1997 it was awarded as Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album
- Since 1998 it has been awarded as Best Spoken Word Album
The category now also includes audio books, poetry readings and story telling.
Three US Presidents have won the awards: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, along with spoken recordings of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Four U.S. Senators have won: Barack Obama (also President of the United States), Everett Dirksen, Al Franken, and Hillary Clinton (also U.S. Secretary of State and First Lady of the United States).
Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, for a recording released in the previous year. Winners are indicated in boldface.
Read more about Grammy Award For Best Spoken Word Album: 2010s, 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1950s
Famous quotes containing the words award, spoken, word and/or album:
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)
“We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word “sophisticate” means, very simply, “obscene.” A sophisticated story is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a “sophisticate” means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)
“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
—Robert Hunter, U.S. rock lyricist. “Truckin’,” on the Grateful Dead album American Beauty (1971)