Randy Travis and George Michael Score Triple Plays

Randy Travis and George Michael each collected three trophies at the 16th annual American Music Awards. The awards, selected by a poll of 20,000 people, were presented during a three-hour ABC-TV ceremony from the Shrine Auditorium. Travis was named favorite male country vocalist and won the album trophy for “Always & Forever” and the single award for “I Told You So.” Michael was favorite male vocalist in both the pop-rock and the soul-rhythm-and-blues categories. His album “Faith” claimed the soul-rhythm & blues album award. Whitney Houston won the favorite female pop-rock and rhythm & blues vocalist categories. Other winners included Guns N’ Roses, whose “Sweet Child O’ Mine” won best pop-rock single, and Freddie Jackson, whose “Nice ‘N’ Slow” took the R&B; single award. Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine won the best pop-rock group trophy, Gladys Knight and the Pips took best R&B; group and Alabama won for country group. Def Leppard swept the heavy metal category as favorite artist and for the album “Hysteria.” The new rap category award went to favorite artist Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince and their album “He’s The D.J. I’m The Rapper.”

--If you want to fit in when you visit the Windy City, you had better mind your manners. Chicago was voted the most polite city in America by business executives in etiquette expert Marjabelle Young Stewart’s fifth annual survey. “Chicago has such healthiness, such feeling, such spirit,” Stewart said from her Kewanee home in western Illinois. The “little courtesies” shown by service people from waiters to cab drivers add up, she said. The rest of the Top 10 are Seattle; New York; Pittsburgh; Indianapolis; Denver; Charleston, S.C.; Boston; Peoria, Ill., and Dallas.

--Barbara Bush is interested in reading more than lips. The First Lady got to work on her main project--promoting literacy--with a meeting in the family quarters of the White House with Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and John Cole, director of the Center for the Book. The two men briefed her on the “Year of the Young Reader,” a program initiated by the Library of Congress to encourage young people to love reading. National Young Reader’s Day will be celebrated Nov. 15 with school and television projects as well as an exchange of children’s books between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mrs. Bush has been involved in literacy efforts for years.