In 1976, Betty Wright Won Her Only Grammy in a Major Upset

The Grammys have always been unpredictable. Look no further than Betty Wright, who died today (May 10) at age 66.

The first time Wright was nominated for a Grammy, she seemed to have an excellent chance of winning. At the 15th Annual Grammy Awards, which were presented on March 3, 1973 at the Tennessee Theatre in Nashville (the only time they were not held in Los Angeles or New York), she was nominated for best R&B vocal performance, female for her sassy smash “Clean Up Woman.” which had been a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

But Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin was simply unbeatable in that category at that time. Franklin won for the sixth year in a row for her album Young, Gifted & Black. (Albums and singles often competed against each other in performance categories in those years.)

Wright was nominated again three years later, but this time, she seemed to have little chance of winning. Her dance/disco hit, “Where Is the Love” (which she co-wrote with Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch of KC & the Sunshine Band, plus Willie Clarke) was nominated for best rhythm & blues song. But unlike “Clean Up Woman,” “Where Is the Love” was not a big crossover hit. It had stalled at No. 96 on the Hot 100.

And the competition that year was fierce. Casey and Finch were nominated with two songs that had been No. 1 hits on the Hot 100 for their red-hot group: “Get Down Tonight” and “That’s The Way (I Like It).” Barney Perry was nominated for writing The Blackbyrds’ “Walking in Rhythm,” a lilting, jazz-accented song that had made the top 10 on the Hot 100. (That group was fronted by jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd.)

Charlie Smalls rounded out the category with “Ease on Down the Road,” a showstopper from the Broadway musical The Wiz, which in April 1975 won a Tony Award for best musical. A disco group, Consumer Rapport, took the song to No. 42 on the Hot 100 — not a home run, but still 54 positions higher than “Where Is the Love.”

If you were handicapping that race, you’d probably start by striking “Where Is the Love.” Against this competition, it seemed to have very little chance. But when the winners were announced at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards at the Hollywood Palladium on Feb. 28, 1976, it was Wright’s minor hit that emerged victorious.

How did it win? Some of it may have been a make-up award, due to a prevailing sense that Wright really should have won for the irresistible “Clean Up Woman.” Another possible factor: The two KC & the Sunshine Band smashes may have split that group’s vote. Finally, it seems possible that at least some out-of-touch Grammy voters (yes, they existed back then and likely still do) saw the title “Where Is the Love” and mixed it up with the classic Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway smash — an entirely different song — from three years before.

Wright wasn’t nominated again for another Grammy for more than 30 years, but she amassed four nominations in the last 13 years of her life. Three of those nods were for collaborations with current hot stars who may have been paying their respects to an artist who had inspired them.

In 2007, she and Angie Stone were nominated for best R&B performance by a duo or group with vocals for “Baby,” a track from Stone’s album The Art of Love & War. In 2008, Wright was nominated for album of the year as one of five featured artists on Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, that year’s best-selling album. Wright was featured on the track “Playing with Fire.”

In 2010, Wright was nominated for best traditional R&B vocal performance for the live track “Go.” She was nominated again in that category again the following year for “Surrender,” a collab with The Roots from their joint album Betty Wright: The Movie. That album dented the Billboard 200 albums chart in 2011.

Wright’s Grammy wasn’t for her most memorable and identifiable record, but at least she got one.