"The Recording Academy Honors" - Page 2

Sub Pop Records is one of the country's most enduring and renowned indie record labels. Sub Pop became a household name in the music world during the grunge movement of the '90s. By releasing the records of Nirvana and Soundgarden, Sub Pop helped inspire a musical renaissance and put Seattle on the music map. Sub Pop has continued its tradition of putting out very fine music, and has released records from a myriad of talented bands that include the Shins, Sleater Kinney, the Postal Service, and recently Wolf Parade.

Memphis Honorees:

Memphis filmmaker Craig Brewer is a self-made man. Like Clarence Saunders, Sam Phillips, Elvis Presley, Fred Smith, and dozens more entrepreneurs and freethinkers who have helped put Memphis on the map, Brewer has succeeded where others might fear to tread. In 2000 this unknown screenwriter/director walked away with the Hollywood Film Festival's Best Digital Feature Award on the basis of his self-financed project The Poor And Hungry. Four years later, Brewer struck gold with his hometown rap epic Hustle & Flow, which won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and was subsequently purchased by MTV Films. Now Brewer is applying his midas touch to the fictional story of a rural bluesman, played by actor Samuel L. Jackson. The Paramount Classics film, Black Snake Moan, is currently in production in Memphis with Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, and David Banner.

They started out as a couple of talented Memphis kids trying to make it in the local music scene. Fate brought them to Stax Records. David Porter got there first and became Stax's first staff songwriter. Grammy-winner Isaac Hayes followed, playing keyboards in Stax's house band. But when Hayes and Porter got together to write songs, that's when the sparks flew. They fueled the success of Stax and Atlantic Records with such classics as "Soul Man," "Hold On, I'm Coming," and "When Something is Wrong With My Baby."

They also were/are producers and artists. Hayes went on to become the first African-American composer to win the Oscar (for the classic "Theme From Shaft" from Shaft), while Porter became one of Memphis' most prominent African-American entrepreneurs. Together they bear the distinction of having had national chart hits in five consecutive decades. Their recent induction into the International Songwriters Hall of Fame cements their rarefied position: as Rodgers and Hammerstein were to Broadway, the Gershwins to classic pop and Leiber and Stoller to '50s rock 'n' roll, Hayes and Porter are to Memphis soul.

Grammy-winning artist Justin Timberlake is among the hottest pop music artists to come from the mid-South since Elvis Presley. Born and raised in the Shelby Forest area north of Memphis, the platinum-selling artist, all of 24, has gone from one mega-success to another. A Mouseketeer with Britney Speers and Christina Aguilera in the early-'90s, at 14, Justin joined Orlando-based five-member vocal group NSYNC. That group would go on to become one of the biggest acts of the past decade, inciting a Beatles-like hysteria in its legion of fans. In 2002, Timberlake went solo; proving that life after the group craze could be even better. His solo debut, Justified, racked up numerous awards including two Grammys, and went on to sell nearly 7 million records worldwide.

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