The Critics Choice Awards on Jan. 4 set off the 2026 awards season where various actors, singers, and artists will be awarded for their work in 2025. One of the most anticipated awards each year is the Grammys, a ceremony that has been around since the late 1950s. The Grammys features many different artists from a variety of genres and backgrounds being awarded for their works in music. Modern day recipients have included Tyler, The Creator and Sabrina Carpenter and new artists just starting to break into the music industry. With the 2026 Grammys coming up on Feb. 1, here is a look at two of the first recipients of these coveted awards.
Johnny is a common name to hear in the music industry, with stars like the iconic Johnny Nash and Johnny Cash, new names such as Johnny Orlando, and even the lesser known but still influential Johnny Thunders, to name a few. But in that wide array of singers, who was Johnny Horton?
John LaGale Horton was born on April 30, 1925 in Los Angeles, Calif., to his father Johnny Loly Horton and mother Ella Robinson. The youngest of five children, he grew up in eastern Texas by the towns Rusk and Gallatin, though frequently his family would move back to California for farm work. He graduated high school in 1944 before attending Lon Morris Junior College in Jacksonville, Texas. From 1944 to 1948 he would change colleges, soon attending Junior College in Kilgore around the same time he was in Jacksonville before briefly going to Baylor University in Waco, until finally going to Seattle University. Sadly he wouldn’t graduate from any of these colleges but not for the reasons one might think.
Just as many other young adults in this stage of their lives, he wanted to experience life. So he traveled and worked at a handful of jobs, once attending a Methodist seminary and working in a mailroom at Selznick International Pictures in Los Angeles where he met his first wife Donna Cook. But the most notable was him panning for gold and working as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. Going there was an important stepping stone in his career that led to his first major hit, “When it’s Springtime in Alaska (it’s Forty Below),” reaching #1 on the country music charts for a number of weeks and even dipping into the pop music charts at #85. While this helped his career, he was still awaiting the pivotal moment that every artist experiences: the moment that proves they could do it, and soon it came for Johnny. It was in the beginning of 1950 when Johnny competed in a talent show in Henderson, Texas, hosted by DJ Jim Reeves, and won. This moment gave him the confidence to start pursuing music fully, getting him a spot on the Louisiana Hayride being referred to as “The Singing Fisherman.”
At the time, The Louisiana Hayride was one of the spots for up and coming talent to thrive and get their start, with some of his co-stars including a young Elvis Presley and Hank Williams, who was his mentor in the early stages of his career and whose surviving wife Billie Jean would become Horton’s second wife. There he performed many different songs like “Honky Tonk Man,” “Sink the Bismark” and “North to Alaska,” which would later be created into a film. Many of his songs became popular but one of them stood out as the most popular and most controversial.“The Battle Of New Orleans” is a highly praised with modern day singers even performing it such as Ray Stevens and the very Iconic Dolly Parton, but due to the more restrictive time the song came out in, some critics did cite the song as “light hearted” and “inaccurate” given its source material.
Tragically, Johnny Horton passed away early in his career just as he was getting traction and starting to become a big name. He died due to a car crash caused by an intoxicated driver. It was reported that his last words to Tillman were, “You know, Tillman, the Lord’s been real good to me this year.” Despite Horton passing away right when his music career was picking up, he was still shown recognition for his contributions to music as a whole. He was given the Grammy Award for Best Country and Western recording a few weeks before his death along with being inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2009 and most recently the Texas Country Hall of Fame on Aug. 9 2025.
Another well known name is the name Bobby, like the up beat Bobby McFerrin, Bobby V and Bobby Vee even Bobby Bare and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland to name a few. Though some may not have heard of the name Bobby Darin. Born in 1936 on May 14 in East Harlem, Walden Robert Cassotto would be raised in a working class Italian family that had ties to the mafia, mainly from his grandfather who had worked as a bootlegger and occasionally his mother too. He grew up alright, actually pretty similar to Mr. Horton, though Darin had a history of rheumatic fevers as young as eight. Raising health concerns for him soon culminated in him developing rheumatic heart disease young, with many of his doctors believing that he wouldn’t live past his 20s. However, this event taught him how fragile life was and how if he wanted to achieve great things, he had to start now. He would prove to be an intelligent mind in academics attending the Bronx Highschool of science, a prestigious school with an acceptance rate close to 3% and a cutoff as low as 500 for students. It was big that he was able to attend their establishment before graduating and soon going to Hunter College in the same city, but he wouldn’t stay for long.
As his younger years taught him, life was fragile and he took that to heart, dropping out of college and pursuing ‘show biz.’ He had a bit of experience by being a drummer in high school to gigs, being in an all state orchestra and even majoring in drama in college. He hung out at the other spot for up and coming artists, “The Brill Building,” known for pushing out hit pop songs around the 50s to 60s. There, Darin would take up opportunities as a demo singer and a songwriter later, notably pitching the song “My First Real Love” to the star Connie Francis. This led to the two of them having a romance between them, but Connie’s father forbade it, to the point that he threatened Darin with a gun, which sadly broke them up. Connie would mention in her autobiography, “Who’s Laughing Now,” that it was her biggest mistake not eloping with him. Despite this core moment in his life and career, he continued songwriting and singing demos, soon getting signed to Decca records. However, due to no major hits it fell through.Thankfully, Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic Records heard Darin playing piano from a neighboring office and soon signed him to Atco Records.
With the new record label Darin would blow up with many different songs including “Splish Slash” quickly followed by “Dream Lover” and his version of “Mack the Knife” and many others to count. But like any celebrity, there were some blemishes, the most notably being the most intertwined with one another. History tells you that many stars have their favorites in politics and so did Bobby, actively campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy after Robert’s older brother president John F. Kennedy’s death in office. He was great friends with Kennedy way before the campaign when Kennedy was a senator, so when he was assassinated it affected him greatly. He released the song “In Memoriam” about his good friend. Following the tragic experience, he too began to go by the name “Bob Darin” and began producing protest songs such as “Long Line Rider,” “Sunday” and “Simple song of Freedom”.
Darin would feel so strongly about listeners needing to hear these songs that when he was on The Jackie Gleason show and was told by staff and even Jackie Gleason himself that he couldn’t perform one due to it being too “controversial”, censoring him and his message that he walked off the show. Declining to sing anything else which did alienate most of his fans since they weren’t used to hearing political messages from him in his music. While his other bad media was more of a family matter.
Campaigning for Kennedy meant that he would be even more in the public’s eye than already as a heart throb, so his family felt it was time for him to know the truth. Growing up he knew Vivian “Polly” Walden as his mother and Nina Cassotto as his older sister, well at the age of 32 they dropped the bomb that Nina was really his mother who had him out of wedlock and that Vivian was his grandma. This would shatter his perception he had of his family, deeply affecting his relationship with Vivian who he looked up to and making him feel like a fraud. Leading to him taking a year to change his style, revamping himself to Bob Darin and telling the messages people needed to hear through his music. But it wouldn’t last long.
Five years later, in 1973 he’d go in for a dental appointment, a routine checkup but due to the heart condition he had for just about all his life would lead to him getting sepsis and after a lengthy surgery sadly passed away. Whereafter his body would be donated to UCLA Medical Center for research as his final wish.
It was a loss to the music industry as many thought he could have been a successor to the beloved Frank Sinatra, and that didn’t go unnoticed. While alive he had won two Grammys in 1960, a Golden Globe in 1962 alongside an Oscar nomination for best supporting role in 1963. Whereas after he passed he would be inducted into both The Rock n Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fames in 1990 and 1999 respectively, with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2010.
It’s a sight to see how two singers on the opposite sides of their home country, with such differences in their upbringings and home life were able to become such bright stars in their time. So with the Grammys being such an iconic pop culture moment each year, it is important to look back at its roots to see how far it has come. Who will be the Johnny and Bobby of this year’s awards?
