‘Unforgettable’ Wins Grammy as Song of Year

“Unforgettable,” written by Irving Gordon and sung by Natalie Cole with her late father, Nat King Cole, through technological wizardry, was named Tuesday night as Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards show.

“It’s nice to have a middle-aged song do something,” Gordon said when he accepted the songwriter’s prize.

“It’s nice to have a song come out that doesn’t scream, yell (or) have a nervous breakdown while it talks about tenderness,” he added. “Also, it’s nice to have a song accepted that you don’t get a hernia when you sing it.”

Natalie Cole proved to be an early Grammy favorite. Before the telecast began, she won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Performance, and her album, also titled “Unforgettable,” won awards for her arranger and engineer.

Bonnie Raitt, who won three Grammys in 1990, won Best Pop Vocal Performance/Female for “Something to Talk About” in the star-studded show, which was telecast from Radio City Music Hall.

Raitt also won two other Grammys this year--Best Rock Vocal Performance Solo for “Luck of the Draw” and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal for her song “Good Man, Good Woman” with Texas country rocker Delbert McClinton.

Michael Bolton won the Best Pop Vocal Performance/Male for “When a Man Loves a Woman,” a reissue of the song made popular by Percy Sledge in the 1960s.

Marc Cohn won as Best New Artist for “Walking in Memphis.”

The Grammy Awards honor 80 top performances by musicians and recording technicians as voted by industry leaders in the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

R.E.M., a folk-rock group nominated in seven categories, won Best Alternative Music Album for “Out of Time.” The group also won Best Music Video/Short Form for “Losing My Religion.”

R.E.M., emerging as one of the evening’s big winners, was ignored by the industry for 10 years, consigned to college rock radio stations.

The late Leonard Bernstein won Best Classical Album for his composition and recording of “Candide.”

The Best Orchestral Performance award went to Daniel Barenboim, conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for Corigliano Symphony No. 1.

That work and its composer, John Corigliano, won the award for Best Contemporary Composition.

Dawn Upshaw, a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, won the Best Classical Vocal Performance award for her album, “The Girl with Orange Lips.”

Best Historical Album was Billie Holiday’s “The Complete Decca Recordings,” featuring the famed jazz singer with full orchestras on 50 songs, including 14 cuts unearthed from the Decca archives and never before heard publicly.

Dizzy Gillespie won the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance for “Live at the Royal Festival Hall.”

Best Country Instrumental Performance was awarded to the group Nashville Cats.

Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner and Vince Gill won the Best Country Vocal Collaboration for “Restless.”

The Best Bluegrass Album was “Spring Training,” featuring Carl Jackson and John Starling, a surgeon who plays bluegrass music as an avocation and was a founding member of the group Seldom Scene.

“Love Can Build a Bridge,” written by Naomi Judd, who retired last year from the popular duo The Judds, John Jarvis and Paul Overstreet, was named Best Country Song.

The original motion picture soundtrack for “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” was named Best Pop Performance.

A song from the the Robin Hood film, “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,” sung by Bryan Adams, won Best Song Especially Written for a Motion Picture.

The music soundtrack from the hit television series, “The Civil War,” won the Best Traditional Folk Album Award. The narration album from “The Civil War,” produced by Ken Burns and Rick Burns, won the Best Spoken Word Award.

Buddy Guy won Best Contemporary Blues for “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues.”

Madonna won the Best Music Video/Long Form award for her “Blonde Ambition World Tour Live,” and Sting won a songwriting award for Best Rock Song as composer of “Soul Cages.”

A group of inmates at a New Jersey prison made Grammy history by being nominated in the long-form video category for their rap mini-album “The Lifers’ Group.” The academy would not allow their representative to attend because he was not a nominee.

It was the 34th annual Grammys presentation and the second straight year the ceremony was held in New York. It was the fifth time the Grammys have been staged here. The presentation usually is held in Los Angeles.

Street signs outside Radio City Music Hall were changed for a night to “Grammy Plaza,” and a giant video screen in Times Square was to show live coverage of the show.

Organizers estimated that a week of activities surrounding the show would generate $40 million in revenue as several thousand participants and guests converged on the city.