A Grammy Giveaway!

On Thursday, January 10, The Recording Academy will present the 50th Annual Grammy Awards to recognize the best in recorded music. Quite a few names that have cropped up here on Get on Down ... are nominated for awards, and Willie Mitchell will receive the Trustees Award for his outstanding career. This year, your ever-lovin' Stepfather of Soul gets to be part of the Grammy experience with this, the first contest to be held on the blog.

In connection with the 50th anniversary of the Grammys, The Recording Academy has paired up with Shout! Factory to release The Ultimate Grammy Collection, seven CDs featuring past winners in the Pop, Country, R&B and Rock categories. Two of the CDs (featuring Contemporary Pop and Contemporary R&B) have already been released; the remaining CDs will be released today. Visit the Ultimate Grammy Collection site at the link above and you can hear audio samples from the CDs. (I know that most readers of this blog are probably more than familiar with the tracks on the "Classic R&B" disc, but it's good to revisit those sometimes!) The kind folks at Miles High Productions have offered to give away three copies of the "Classic R&B" volume of the series to Get on Down ... readers, and I thought it would be fun to do a trivia contest to determine who will receive them. So let's get started with the contest:

The track list for the "Classic R&B" disc is as follows:

1. Aretha Franklin “Respect”
2. Sam & Dave “Soul Man”
3. Otis Redding “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay”
4. The Isley Brothers “It’s Your Thing”
5. Ike & Tina Turner “Proud Mary”
6. Bill Withers “Ain’t No Sunshine”
7. Billy Paul “Me And Mrs. Jones”
8. The Temptations “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” (Single Version)
9. Gladys Knight & The Pips “Midnight Train To Georgia ”
10. Natalie Cole “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)”
11. The Emotions “Best Of My Love”
12. Donna Summer “Last Dance”
13. Earth, Wind & Fire “After The Love Has Gone”
14. Marvin Gaye “Sexual Healing”
15. Rufus and Chaka Khan “Ain’t Nobody”
16. Commodores “Nightshift” (Album Version)

The following questions have to do with the artists and/or the songs listed above. Note that some questions will have more than one answer, so although there are only five questions (not including the tie-breaker), there are a total of 16 answers. And now the questions:

Q1: Which of the artists on the CD is the subject of another song on the CD?

Q2: Which of the artists on the CD is the author of another song on the CD?

Q3: Which songs on the CD are cover versions of previously-recorded songs?

Q4: Which of the artists on the CD had records released at one point or another on Stax, Volt, or Enterprise? (Make sure that you consider songs outside of those listed above, and consider that one artist was not given the main artist billing on records released on them.)

Q5: Which of the artists on the CD had records released at one point or another on Motown, Tamla, Gordy or Soul?

TIE-BREAKER: Otis Redding and Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" are linked by one person, and Otis is linked to Natalie Cole's "This Will Be" by two people. Name the three people.

Submit your answers to the five questions and the tie-breaker via e-mail to jasonstone60643@yahoo.com by 8:30 AM Eastern Standard Time (US) tomorrow (January 9), and the three responders with the most correct answers out of the five questions will win a copy of the CD. The tie-breaker question will be used to break ties, and if more than three people answer the tie-breaker correctly, the three winners will be selected at random. I will notify the winners via return e-mail and arrange for the folks at Miles High to send out the CDs.

To end this post in the soulful spirit and in the Grammy spirit, here's a YouTube clip of Joe Tex at the 1978 Grammys, joined by a bevy of dancers for the famous "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)."