Meet The Man Who Designs Every Grammy

The Academy Award. The Stanely Cup. The Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Heisman.

These are just a few of the most iconic trophies in the arts and sports world. And if you were to place another trophy on the mantle of the most distinguished awards, you’d have to consider the Grammy.

Since its inception in 1959, the Grammy trophy has been handed to the best entertainers, musicians, producers, and songwriters in the music industry.

Extraordinary, personalized care goes into creating each Grammy. By comparison, the Academy Award statuette is created in a warehouse that’s longer than an NFL football field, the Emmy is crafted in an 82,000-square-foot facility in Chicago, and the Lombardi trophy is cast in a facility owned by Tiffany & Co.

And, then you have the Grammy – handcrafted since 1983 in a workshop tucked away in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. More on that later in this newsletter.

Let’s explore the unique history that has made the Grammy unique over the years and how the branding and craftsmanship have set it apart from other accolades.

How the Grammys Started

To trace the origins of the Grammy award, you’d have to go back to the 1950s in the heart of the entertainment capital of the United States – Hollywood, California.

Not only were the Academy Awards en vogue, but they were a big, splashy event. The glitz and glamour of the moving pictures helped elevate movie stars and translated to tickets purchased by consumers of the silver screen.

Recording executives in Los Angeles had a dream that the musical acts and artists could have a similar path forward to help propel that industry to new heights. The Hollywood Walk of Fame board was tasked with finding artists, but it was soon apparent that many of those in their orbit would never qualify for a star on the famed walk. Instead, they needed a big and glamorous event that would ripple from beyond Southern California.

A newspaper article captured the sentiment of the group as they simultaneously searched for validity and credibility as the recording industry was experiencing rapid growth while also touching on their legacy’s roots:

“We feel it’s about time the record industry grows up and gets a little recognition for its part in the entertainment industry. The record companies never promote records as a form of entertainment the way movie and TV companies promote themselves. After all, a lot of stars got their start in the phonograph medium. And the record industry is in a tremendous boom now because of hi-fi.” – Paul Weston, Columbia Records

Executives, producers, and musicians formally created the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) in 1957. Soon after, plans were in motion to create their own splashy awards show.

There was just one problem: The origination of this event came right at the same time as the rock-and-roll revolution was changing how people listened to music.

At first, executives kept the voting to members of the NARAS and industry insiders – effectively blocking some of the up-and-coming artists in rock from receiving accolades for their work, including Chuck Berry (Johnny B. Goode), Buddy Holly (Rave On), and Little Richard (Good Golly, Miss Molly).

The first hurdle for the team was to name the awards.

The early favorite was to call them the Edison or Edies, honoring Thomas Edison and his various contributions to recording and the music industry. Today, the design (more on that later) of the Grammy features a Gramophone, which evolved from the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison in 1877.

Despite losing most of his hearing in childhood, Edison continued changing the world with devices to record and play sounds back. In addition to almost having the Grammy named for him, Edison was twice posthumously awarded the Grammy for his profound contributions to recording arts and science.

Edison began his creation with sketches and drawings connecting his knowledge of how the telegraph and telephone worked. Those experiments showed him there was a likelihood he could record sound – and the result was astonishingly similar to what we now consider the record player. “From my experiments on the telephone, I knew the power of a diaphragm to take up sound vibrations. Instead of using a disk, I designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was placed tin foil, which easily received the movements of the diaphragm,” Edison explained in his biography.

In 1977, the Recording Academy bestowed family members of Edison with their National Trustee Award for achievement in recording sound. His second came in 2009 with the Special Merit Award, highlighting his work with recording instruments and the tin foil phonograph he devised in Menlo Park. “In 1877, he gained public fame for his patent of the phonograph, the first device to record and reproduce sound,” the Recording Academy said. “Edison’s tabletop phonograph was integral in revolutionizing entertainment by bringing music into the homes of people all around the world,” the academy noted.

How The Grammy Got Its Name

The Academy even started a naming contest for the award. The rules were simple: mail in your preferred name for the award.

A secretary from New Orleans, Rosejay “Jay” Elizabeth Danna, saw a newspaper article about the contest and sent her idea into consideration. She drew inspiration from the gramophone sitting in her living room, telling a local paper that she “used to play that little machine all the time and sometimes it got loud, and my mother would yell, ‘Turn down the grammy!”

She sent the name in the mail along with 300 other people. Danna was the overall winner on account that her letter was received first. For her creativity and speed, she was forever part of Grammy history. And she was given 25 LP records from the Recording Academy.

The First Annual Grammys

History will forever note that the first Grammys were held on May 4, 1959.

At that point, called the Gramophone Awards, the event was interesting because it launched simultaneously in two locations – one from the Beverly Hills Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, and the other on the East Coast in the Park Sheraton in New York City, New York.

In total, 28 Grammys were handed out, and the crooner, Frank Sinatra, was nominated more than any other artist with six. Despite that, he only took home one Grammy as the art director for the cover of his album, Only the Lonely. It would be the first of 11 that he would receive throughout his career.

The three biggest honors of the evening included:

• Album of the Year - The Music From Peter Gunn by Henry Mancini

• Song of the Year - Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu by Domenico Modugno

• Record of the Year - Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu by Domenico Modugno

The event was favorably covered by the media, earning positive reviews from the likes of The Billboard who declared “it sharply contrasted similar affairs staged by the two older entertainment academies in its precision-like pace in handling the presentations.”

One of the awards was given to The Champs for their song “Tequilla.” The Latin-inspired surf tune was written by Chuck Rio and performed by rockabilly singer Dave Burgess. Today, the song continues to have deep cultural reverence, but at the time, it raised questions when it won the R&B category, despite topping both pop and R&B charts. The band was put together rather quickly, aligned under Gene Autry’s Challenge Records label.

Recently, that Grammy came up for auction, and the handwritten note from Burgess sheds some light on rock's early influence in the Grammys when the academy was reluctant to honor the genre.

In the letter to the auction house, Burgess writes in the auction listing:

“I, Dave Burgess was the leader of a rock group known as THE CHAMPS, best known for our worldwide number one hit of TEQUILA. I was nominated and received the first Grammy Award ever presented at the first Grammy award show in Hollywood, California.”

The listing also does a great job of cataloging a piece of music and rock history down to the condition, size, and state of Dave’s Grammy:

Award is a gold-plated metal representation of a gramophone affixed to a wooden base, with a plaque reading "National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences / 1958 / Presented to / Dave Burgess & The Champs / Tequila." Also included is the original nomination certificate presented to The Champs, as well as a program from the ceremony signed by Champs guitarist Dave Burgess. Grammy award measures 4.75" x 4.75" x 6.5". Plaque measures 8.5" x 10.5" and folded program measures 11" x 14.5". Moderate wear to wooden base and slight separation of gold gramophone from base but which remains attached as issued. Horn is a separate piece that screws onto trophy, and is attached, but has a stripped and partially broken thread. Light wear to certificate and light creasing and tears to edges of program. Very good to near fine overall. With an LOA from award winner Dave Burgess.

The auction closed, with the lot selling for $62,500

The Evolution of the Grammy Award

Today, the design and shape of the Grammy have remained relatively the same.

Here are some facts about the statuette:

• It weighs five pounds and four ounces.

• Stands nine inches tall.

• Comprised of zinc alloy, which has been ceremoniously named Grammium.

• The Grammy is plated in gold.

• The value is difficult to assign to each statuette because of the unique metals. Still, once handed to a recipient, the value immediately drops because the winner is prohibited from selling the trophy.

• While the award carries little monetary value, there is a significant bump for winners, who have been known to be afflicted with the Grammy Bounce and its 55% increase in ticket and album sales. Talk about a nice payday.

Over the last six decades of Grammys, there have been five distinct designs that have helped usher in new updates to the award, all continuing to pay homage to the gramophone.

The Five Grammy Designs

The First Grammy Design

1958-1962

This design featured a hand-crank soldered onto the base that a winner could wind, but it was known to break.

Second Grammy Design

1963-1968

Third Grammy Design

1969-1988

A single subtle difference was included in this design: the base was raised one-quarter of an inch.

The Fourth Grammy Design

1989 - 1990

Another slight change – the existing base was raised another three-eighths of an inch.

The Fifth (and final) Grammy Design

1991 - Present

Meet The Grammy Man

So, who is the craftsman behind this award?

Meet John Billings, known around the music industry as Mr. Grammy.

For the past four decades, his studio has been the brainchild behind nearly every facet of Grammy production, from the design to the final polish. There may be no other artisan in charge of such an iconic award with such a personalized touch – Billings even drives the annual allotment of awards from his studio to Los Angeles himself to ensure no damage.

Billings first made a Grammy in 1983, taking over the legacy of the business from Bob Graves, who designed and cast them all the way back to that first show in 1958 – all from a Los Angeles garage.

Billings happened into the business of designing high-end awards all because of proximity and chance. He lived a few doors down from Graves in L.A., and he happened to take up the mantle of learning to cast dental implements. He saw the work Graves was doing and immediately was taken in by the intricacies and delicate handy work required to create each individual award.

Soon, Billings was doing an apprenticeship for Graves, and the rest is history.

When Graves passed away in 1983, Billings was the logical next in line to take up the mantle of Grammy design and production.

The transition also provided an opportunity to have a hand in the fifth and final design changes in store for the Grammy that are still in place today.

Some of the changes Billings helped usher in that are currently in place for the statuette, include:

• Bringing a bit more substance to an award that previously seemed small on a television screen – making it thirty percent larger.

• Addressing the issues with the base breaking and making the tone-arm stronger.

• Creating a proprietary, trademarked blend of alloys he called Grammium.

• Despite all these changes, the award still weighs, on average, five pounds.

The task of updating the award was not a simple one. It took a year of sketching and ideating, requiring Billings to test out prototypes from scrap metal in his Colorado studio without sacrificing the legacy and influences of the award that have been hallmarks of the award from the beginning.

Today, there is something special about how this award retains its handmade legacy, which is passed to the industry’s best musicians and artists annually. Billings now has a small team of four people to help ensure nothing is missed during the production of the awards, but it still takes an entire year for them to produce the batch of that year’s Grammys.

That ethos is part of what aligns with the mission of the academy. “It means a great deal to us – John is part of the family. It’s that personal service; it’s not dealing with some sort of an anonymous corporation. It’s dealing with a person who is hands-on, who deals with making these beautiful works of art many times over,” said Bill Freimuth, vice president of the Recording Academy.

To this day, Billings considers each Grammy to be like a kid – each unique in their own way, ushered along the production process with the devotion and care needed to make it a work of art that will be cherished by the recipient and their family for generations.

“They’re all just like children. I really never try to question why someone is getting an award; I do sometimes question why someone is not.” – Billings in an interview with the New York Times.

To further symbolize the award’s uniqueness, when it’s completed, it’s laser-etched with a serial number for authentication. And another factoid that may fly under the radar: The Grammy you see on the television are actual placeholders, the real ones are engraved by Billings in Colorado after the winners are announced.