ON THIS DAY IN BLACK MUSIC HISTORY: FEBRUARY 25

#1 R&B Song 1984:   “Encore,” Cheryl Lynn

 

Born:   Blues vocalist Ida Cox (Ida Prather), 1896

 

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1984   British jazz/R&B singer Sade charted in England with her debut “Your Love Is King,” reaching #6. It would be almost a year before she would become known in America, but for a different song, “Smooth Operator.”

 

 

 

1986   Dionne Warwick presented her cousin, Whitney Houston, with the Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female Award at the twenty-eighth annual Grammy Awards.

 

1992   Boyz II Men, who performed in their trademark ’50s high-school matching garb and who would go on to be the most successful vocal group of the ’90s, won the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category for their Cooleyhighharmony album at the thirty-fourth annual Garmmy Awards at Radio City Music Hall, New York City. Natalie Cole, however, was the big winer, with Grammys for Record of the Year, and best Engineered Album (nonclassical).

 

1992   James Brown and Muddy Waters each won the coveted Lifetime Achievement Awards at the thirty-fourth annual Grammy Awards. Unfortunately for Waters, it was bestowed upon him almost nine years after he died.

 

1992   Tina Turner’s British TV biopic, The Girl From Nutbush, aired on BBC1 in England.

 

1993   As if the previous year wasn’t enough, James Brown was given the  Lifetime Achievement Award at the fourth annual Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Awards in Los Angeles. The award was presented by MC Hammer. Also given Pioneer Awards that night were Floyd Dixon, Lowell Fulsom, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Little Anthony & the Imperials, Erskine Hawkins, and Martha & the Vandellas.

 

1997   Sade was arrested in Montego Bay, Jamaica for disorderly conduct, disobeying a policeman, and dangerous driving. In that particular incident she obviously was not a “smooth operator.”

 

1999   Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, Cindy Birdsong, and Patrica Holt, better known as Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, appeared together for the first time in thirty-one years singing a stirring “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at the Rhythm & Blues Foundation’s Pioneer Awards in Los Angeles. The group was presented its award by five-time Grammy winner, Lauryn Hill.