On Sunday, Feb. 2, the 67th Annual Grammy Awards aired live on CBS and Paramount+.
What did not air was the ceremony for the Special Merit Awards held Feb. 1 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. The 2025 honorees included Lifetime Achievement Award recipients Frankie Beverly, Dr. Bobby Jones, Frankie Valli, Roxanne Shante, Taj Mahal, The Clash, and Prince.
Trustees awards — which are presented to individuals who have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording — were given to Cuban conductor and composer Tania León, producer and engineer Glyn Johns, and jazz pianist and composer Erroll Garner. Dr. Leo Beranek was the Grammy Technical Award honoree.
An official Grammy Week 2025 event, the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Awards Ceremony was sponsored by Budweiser and lasted for approximately two hours. For 23 of those minutes, a host of guests spoke on Prince’s behalf including Grammy-winning producer Jimmy Jam, a former associate as keyboardist for The Time. Jam is also chairman emeritus of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, and his comments spoke to the unparalleled work ethic Prince possessed.
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Prince’s niece, Rihanna Nelson, alongside her daughter and twin sons donning tuxes and tennis shoes, accepted the award. Former bassist and best childhood friend Andre Cymone, Revolution drummer Bobby Z., and Jerome Benton, also of The Time, spoke along with Prince’s longtime manager/attorney L. Londell McMillan, as well as Charles F. Spicer, Jr., who has a significant role in the management of the artist’s legacy.
“He was an advocate for artist rights,” McMillan said. “He didn’t put ‘Slave’ on his face just for fun. He wanted to take a stand.”
Bobby Z., who first met Prince, he shared, at age 19, expressed a sentiment that was met with hearty applause.
“He was one of the most gifted human beings that ever lived, the greatest entertainer that ever lived.”
Prince was fortunate to live in a time marked by the presence of a formidable smorgasbord of extraordinary artists, and he shared the tribute stage, spiritually, with a number of them at the Special Merit Awards ceremony. Prince would have been 9 or 10 when blues multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal made his musical debut and, notably, was credited with having one of the first interracial bands of the period. Mahal accepted his award with his two daughters at his side.
Just a few years prior to Mahal’s emergence on the public scene, Frankie Beverly made his first recording with early band The Butlers before forming Raw Soul in 1970, which later became MAZE (a name-change decision credited to friend Marvin Gaye).
The band recorded under that name one year before Prince released his debut album, and in subsequent years, numerous evergreen R&B staples were born, including “Before I Let Go.” Beverly’s son Anthony, also born during that time, accepted the award for Beverly — who died in September of 2024 — alongside original MAZE member Ronald Roame Lowry.
Among other post-humous award recipients was Joe Strummer, frontman of The Clash, which like MAZE and Prince, released its debut album in the late 1970s. Public Enemy’s Chuck D. accepted the award on Strummer’s behalf.
Rapper Roxanne Shante was recognized as one of the first female MCs at age 14 with “Roxanne’s Revenge” in 1985, a year after Prince achieved international stardom with his legendary album and film, “Purple Rain.”
Shante devised her rap song as a “diss track” rebuttal to U.T.F.O.’s hit “Roxanne, Roxanne.” She was this year’s youngest awardee at age 55 and dedicated it to beloved peer rapper Biz Markie, who died in 2021.
The Special Merit Award is most often presented to those of an advanced age. Frankie Valli, who fronted The Four Seasons before going solo in the late 1960s, and gospel singer/TV host/radio broadcaster Dr. Bobby Jones were the oldest living recipients of the lifetime achievement award, at age 85 and 90, respectively.
Cuban-born, Pulitzer Prize-winning conductor/composer Tania León, age 81, and rock producer/sound engineer Glyn Johns, 82 have enjoyed decorated careers fitting of Trustee honorees.
Notably, the third honored Trustee, inimitable jazz pianist and composer Erroll Garner, who is responsible for mammoth jazz standards such as “Misty” and “Lullaby at Birdland” had to wait 47 years postmortem to receive his award. Garner died in 1977; the year Prince recorded his debut album “For You.”
