Mike will present a Hero Award to legendary Memphis band, Big Star, tonight at the Memphis Chapter of The Recording Academy’s awards’ ceremony. The event will honor several outstanding artists who have made contributions to popular culture and American music. In addition to Big Star, this year’s heroes include Rock ‘n’ Roll hall of famer Scotty Moore, the late Bill Black, D.J. Fontana, & Grammy-winners Ike Turner and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
During the early 1970’s, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel formed Big Star–named after a Memphis grocery store chain–and proceeded to release three seminal but commercially underappreciated albums throughout the decade: “Number One Record” (1972), “Radio City” (1974), and “Third/Sister Lovers” (1978) (released after Bell’s departure from the group and subsequent death the same year). The three studio albums are listed in Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time,” and the group’s influence on subsequent generations of alternative bands including R.E.M., the Replacements, the dBs, Teenage Fanclub, and The Posies is enormous.