Grammy Awards

Grammy nods: Brenda Lee, Tom Paxton, Hank Jones, the Blind Boys of Alabama, the Four Tops, Gene Autry and Dean Martin have been selected to receive lifetime achievement awards at the Grammy Awards in February.

The gig: Mary Micucci, 63, is the owner of Along Came Mary Events, one of Hollywood's leading catering and special events businesses. Often called the "caterer to the stars," Micucci has handled more than 400 movie premieres, from "Titanic" in 1997 to "The Hangover Part III" earlier this month, as well as numerous Grammy, Emmy and Academy Awards parties. She has also catered events for numerous celebrities, including Barbra Streisand's wedding to actor James Brolin in 1998. The food business wasn't an obvious career path for Micucci, a former flight attendant who also worked as a cocktail waitress while she was a student at Cal State L.A., where she got her degree in psychology and communications.

She's a little bit country. He's a little bit rock 'n' roll. It figures, doesn't it? But musical siblings Jesse and Joy Huerta, who'll be chasing a Grammy Award on Sunday in the Latin pop album category, differ from Donny and Marie Osmond in more ways than one. For starters, there's the dual-language thing. Born and raised in Mexico City, Jesse, 28, and Joy, 26, grew up switching back and forth between their Wisconsin mama's native idiom and their Mexican papa's mother tongue.

Janos Starker, a renowned concert cellist as well as a distinguished teacher and recording artist, died Sunday at his home in Bloomington, Ind. He was 88 and had been in declining health. Since 1958, Starker had been a professor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. The university announced his death. Starker's cello seminars attracted students from all over the world. "I personally cannot perform without teaching, and I cannot teach without performing," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1993.

Musician Carlos Santana is working on a memoir, publisher Little, Brown announced Thursday. The as-yet-untitled memoir by the guitarist/composer will be published simultaneously in English and Spanish in 2014. Santana has won 10 Grammy awards, three Latin Grammys and has seen more than a dozen records go silver, gold and platinum. He has led bands that carry his name, performed successful duets like "Smooth" with Rob Thomas, has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has recently appeared on "American Idol.

After 28.4 million viewers tuned into the Feb. 10 Grammy Awards, Pop & Hiss had some thoughts on how to improve the show . Some of the suggestions were lighthearted -- no more mimes, for instance -- and others took the Grammys to task for regularly booking familiar faces such as Elton John and Sting.  The telecast's longtime executive producer, Ken Ehrlich, wrote a letter to The Times to respond to the criticisms. Ehrlich, a three-decade veteran...

Last week, a group of Latino and Mexican artists up for three Grammy Awards gathered in a narrow Boyle Heights storefront - mostly in the flesh, some via Skype, a few present in spirit. They'd assembled to honor a strain of regional folk music nicknamed "the Mexican blues" that generations of L.A. musicians have stamped onto their DNA but that until this year the Grammys had largely ignored. The music, son jarocho (pronounced ha-RO-cho), is a hothouse hybrid of baroque Spanish instruments, ferocious Afro-Caribbean beats, Native American poetics and wise-cracking wordplay that Iberian conquistadors and black slaves imported to the tropical Mexican state of Veracruz.

In 10 years, C. Michael Greene has transformed the Grammy Awards from a minor industry ritual into the global television event airing Wednesday night before an audience of 1.5 billion. Along the way, the 49-year-old Greene, chief executive of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, has transformed himself into one of the most powerful and controversial figures in the music industry. Once a struggling Atlanta saxophonist, Greene now lives in a $1.

It's been a good month for Merle Haggard. Two weeks ago, the legendary country songwriter was celebrated with a Grammy lifetime achievement award, and on Tuesday, 10 of his classic 1960s and early-'70s albums are set to arrive in stores in richly archival fashion. The man they call Hag could rightly be basking in the attention -- but Haggard remains as much iconoclast as he is icon and, like his old anthem, he's never shy about showing the "Fightin' Side of Me."

 The 55th Grammy Awards honored a wide range of acts on Sunday night. Mumford & Sons' "Babel" was named top album, Gotye won record of the year for "Somebody That I Used to Know" and the New York City group Fun. took home awards for song of the year with "We Are Young" and for best new artist. What to make of it all? Join Times pop music critic Randall Roberts and Times staff writer Todd Martens as they discuss the Grammys in a video chat right here at 10 a.m. The victories in the four major categories were in keeping with an evening that saw relatively youthful acts rewarded by the voting members of the Recording Academy.

George Jones, whose anguished vocals on the 1980 single “He Stopped Loving Her Today” lifted it to the top of polls of the greatest country music songs of all time, died Friday. He was 81. Jones died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, publicist Kirt Webster told the Associated Press. He had been suffering from a fever and irregular blood pressure. The baritone from east Texas astonished and delighted fans who had seen him struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, multiple marriages and divorces, lawsuits over his erratic behavior and brushes with death in motor vehicle accidents.

Just ahead of his planned appearance this weekend on "Saturday Night Live," Miguel on Wednesday released a new remix of his song "How Many Drinks?" featuring Kendrick Lamar. The two L.A.-based artists broke out in 2012 with two of the year's most critically acclaimed albums: With "Kaleidoscope Dream," which also earned nominations for several Grammy Awards, Miguel offered a sensually futuristic vision of deep-groove R&B, while Lamar's "good kid, m.A.A.d city" reimagined West Coast hip-hop for kids who might not have been born when 2Pac's "All Eyez on Me" came out. In "How Many Drinks?

Having already dominated the Grammy Awards, late-night television and the Billboard 200, Justin Timberlake rode his rolling promotional juggernaut to the White House on Tuesday night, taking part in an all-star tribute to Memphis soul along with Mavis Staples, Booker T. Jones and Queen Latifah, among others. And, yes, he wore his suit and tie . The invite-only concert, to be broadcast April 16 on PBS, was the latest installment in a series of "In Performance at the White House" events that have seen President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama celebrate country music, Motown and the work of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

Chris Brown considers the night he brutalized his girlfriend Rihanna "the biggest mistake" of his life. Acknowledging his actions that left Rihanna's face bloodied and bruised the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards, the 23-year-old opened up about the couple's rekindled romance. "Sometimes you row, you fight, with the one you love and things get said, stuff spirals," he told the Mirror at Elton John's Academy Awards party on Sunday. "That night was the deepest regret of my life, the biggest mistake.

After 28.4 million viewers tuned into the Feb. 10 Grammy Awards, Pop & Hiss had some thoughts on how to improve the show . Some of the suggestions were lighthearted -- no more mimes, for instance -- and others took the Grammys to task for regularly booking familiar faces such as Elton John and Sting.  The telecast's longtime executive producer, Ken Ehrlich, wrote a letter to The Times to respond to the criticisms. Ehrlich, a three-decade veteran...

Details of the previously reported summer tour pairing Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z have been unveiled, with a dozen stops across North America beginning July 17 in Toronto and including a July 28 performance at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Their Legends of the Summer Tour also includes dates in San Francisco; New York; Chicago; Vancouver, Canada; Hershey, Penn.; Detroit; Baltimore; Boston; Philadelphia and Miami. Tickets go on sale Thursday for all shows except the concert at Yankee Stadium in New York, which will go on sale separately, with details still to be announced.

The 55th Grammy Awards are taking place this Sunday at Staples Center at L.A. Live and, as usual, the awards show will have no shortage of musicians, rock glam and unusual performance mashups. The show will be broadcast live on CBS on the East Coast from 8 to 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time and will air on the West Coast on tape delay from 8 to 11:30 p.m. Pacific Time. The red carpet, perhaps of a much more mild variety , begins at 12 p.m. Pacific time but will start filling up with talent at about 2 p.m. FULL COVERAGE: Grammy Awards 2013 Ten awards are doled out during the three-hour televised show, which will consist of collaborative performances by legends and pop stars.

The lineup for Feb. 10's Grammy Awards just got a little more rootsy and country, as the Recording Academy unveiled today that Jack White, the Lumineers and Carrie Underwood are among the artists performing on the telecast, which will be broadcast live except for the West Coast on CBS. The Grammys on Thursday also teased some of the unexpected artist mash-ups the broadcast is famous for. Elton John, whose performance with Eminem in 2001 remains one...

At the Grammys  on Sunday, Rihanna's “We Found Love” won an award for short form video during the pre-telecast. But her label is likely more excited about the resulting sales bump. By the end of Sunday night, her ballad “Stay,”  which she performed during the ceremony,  had sold 67,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a nearly 300% bump. And that's just figures tabulated through Sunday evening. While the full Grammy effect won't be evident until the Feb. 20 charts, acts that graced the stage and walked away winners are already enjoying an early surge in sales.

Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z may be taking their buddy act on the road, possibly for a stadium tour this summer, according to various press reports. Having appeared together Sunday night at the Grammy Awards, following another recent joint performance in New Orleans on Super Bowl weekend, Timberlake and Jay-Z are said to be lining up perhaps a dozen or more stadium shows together. GRAMMYS 2013: Full coverage |   Nomination snubs & surprises | Timeline | Red carpet | Video: Red carpet | Red carpet fashion “We're definitely going to go on tour,” Timberlake told the New York Post on the Grammy ceremony red carpet  Sunday.