What was the first movie soundtrack to win a Grammy for ‘Album of the Year’?
Ever since the Recording Academy has been handing out their Grammy Awards, a few movie soundtracks have slipped into the nominations and walked away with the coveted ‘Album of the Year’ gong.
Naturally, such a prize is usually doled out to the stars of rock and pop, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Frank Sinatra, boasting three ‘Album of the Year’s each in their trophy cabinet, while Taylor Swift’s done one better with a record-breaking four wins.
However, it’s often forgotten how many Grammys were thrown at the humble comedy record. While an antiquated release now, early ‘Album of the Year’s had been bestowed to Bob Newhart for 1960’s The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart live recording with Vaughn Meader’s The First Family presidential pastiche winning three years later.
Musicals have enjoyed their own bespoke category for decades, specific cast recordings of the big Broadway and West End productions in the running for the ‘Best Musical Theatre Album’ award, but Hollywood’s managed to walk away with an ‘Album of the Year’ Grammy more than once.
The most recent was the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, taking home the premier win in 2002 on the back of its acclaimed country and bluegrass soundtrack under T-Bone Burnett’s production, shooting to the top of the Billboard 200 to boot.
Before that, Whitney Houston single-handedly catapulted 1992’s The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album to the top of the Academy’s affections, the mammoth cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ and the ‘I’m Every Woman’ smash cementing her’s and Kevin Costner’s namesake romantic thriller to box office gold and the accompanying soundtrack as the third biggest selling album of all time, despite the numerous Razzie nominations.
So what was the first movie soundtrack to win ‘Album of the Year’?
Right at the very first Grammy ceremony in 1959, ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ composer Henry Mancini picked up Album of the Year’ for his score to NBC’s Peter Gunn private eye series, albeit a TV show.
For the movies, we have to jump to arguably the 1970s’ most immortal pop cultural artefact. While lower on the biggest-selling albums list under Houston’s The Bodyguard yodeller, 1977’s Saturday Night Fever soundtrack comes in at tenth with a whopping 40million reported sales under its buckled belt. To this day, it still stands as disco’s ultimate time capsule, the movie immortalising John Travolta as a dancefloor icon while the songs across the album’s double LP boast mirror ball standards from the disco golden age.
It’s often forgotten that Saturday Night Fever isn’t just a Bee Gees record. Although bestowing the record’s most defining numbers, from ‘Stayin’ Alive’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, and ‘Night Fever’, among others, there’s also Walter Murphy’s campy ‘A Fifth of Beethoven’ classic and The Trammps’ ‘Disco Inferno’ jiver.
The Academy certainly dug it. Beating Barry Manilow, Travolta’s other music phenomenon, Grease, Jackson Browne and The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls comeback, Saturday Night Fever hustled to the stage of Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium in 1979 to hold the ‘Album of the Year’ Grammy in triumph, the Bee Gees walking home with another three gongs that evening too.
