Grammy Awards Rewind: See Old Photos of Brad Paisley, Reba McEntire + More at the Big Show
The Grammy Awards are celebrating their 63rd anniversary in 2021, but the all-genre awards ceremony may never have began if not for the founding of the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the 1950s. Executives helping with Walk of Fame inductee selection decided that the music industry needed its own honor, and thus, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences -- and, then, the Grammy Awards -- was born.
The very first Grammy Awards ceremony took place on May 4, 1959. That year, there was only a single country-specific category -- Best Country & Western Recording, which went to the Kingston Trio -- though by the mid-'60s, the number of categories for the genre had expanded to a handful.
The first annual Grammy Awards, held simultaneously in both Beverly Hills, Calif., and New York City, were not televised, but the second annual ceremony -- also held in 1959 -- was, though not live. The first live airing of the Grammy Awards came in 1971, with the 13th annual event.
In the more than six decades since, plenty of major country names have stepped into the spotlight at the Grammy Awards, both as big winners and as the stars of the night's performances. Flip through the photo gallery below to see some old-school shots of Garth Brooks, Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw from Grammy Awards ceremonies past:
The 2021 Grammy Awards will take place on Sunday (March 14), with comedian and late-night TV host Trevor Noah as host. The televised ceremony will begin at 8PM ET on CBS, and the pre-telecast Premiere Ceremony will be available to stream online earlier in the evening. The show was pushed back from late January due to the COVID-19 pandemic.