Why the first winner is not named here
This article does not assert who first won a women’s pop vocal Grammy, or in which exact year. The reason is practical: the award that is now remembered as the female pop vocal prize began life under other names and went through several versions, so the answer depends on which version is counted. Nothing of the kind was a 1967 first. What follows is the verifiable outline of how the category evolved and what women in pop were doing in the years around 1967.
The category before it was called “pop”
At the first Grammy ceremony in 1959, honouring 1958 recordings, there was a general award for female vocal performance, which was not limited to a genre label. Pop singing was, in effect, the default territory of that award. As the Academy added more genres, it began to carve out narrower vocal categories, and the broad female award was gradually replaced by awards tied to styles.
In the 1960s the structure became more complicated. As rock and roll, rhythm and blues and “contemporary” records took up more of the charts, the Academy introduced categories with names such as contemporary solo vocal performance alongside the more traditional vocal awards. This is the point at which readers often become confused, because a singer who would today be described as a pop singer could be nominated in a “contemporary” category or in a general vocal one, depending on the year.
A category carrying “pop” in its title became the recognisable home of women’s pop vocals later in the decades that followed. Its name and exact wording were adjusted more than once. In the early 2010s, the Academy merged many separate male and female vocal awards into solo categories, and the women-only pop vocal award disappeared in its earlier form.
Women in pop before 1967
The 1950s and early 1960s were dominated, on the pop side, by a mix of traditional pop vocalists, big-band alumni, and the girl groups and solo singers of the early 1960s. Women such as Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee came out of the jazz and standards tradition, while younger singers, including those behind girl-group hits, were closer to the new teenage market.
The mid-1960s then brought a second wave. Singers such as Dionne Warwick, with her Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs, and Petula Clark, a British star with American hits, were hugely visible. The British Invasion largely belonged to male groups, but women were never absent from the charts, and several of the decade’s most recognisable voices were women.
The 1967 charts
The year 1967 gave a snapshot of how varied women’s pop had become. A few well-documented examples:
- Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” became a major hit in the spring of 1967, bringing a gospel-trained voice to the centre of the pop charts.
- Nancy Sinatra and her father Frank had a number-one hit with “Somethin’ Stupid” in the spring.
- Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” was a hit in the summer, mixing country, folk and pop storytelling.
- Dionne Warwick’s songs were consistently on the radio, with “I Say a Little Prayer” appearing late in the year.
- Grace Slick, with Jefferson Airplane, reached the pop charts with “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit”.
These are only a handful of examples, but they show a pop landscape in which a female lead could be found in soul, rock, country-pop and orchestral pop. The question of which of them fits a “pop vocal” category was already a difficult one, which is part of why categories were later reorganised. Radio itself was fragmenting, with Top 40 radio still dominant but FM radio opening space for album-oriented music.
The 1967 awards season
The ceremony in early 1967 honoured 1966 recordings, and the one in early 1968 honoured 1967 recordings. In that season the Grammys were widely seen as a mixed judge of the music of 1967. The Academy’s voters remained fond of established pop and easy-listening performers, but there was also visible recognition of the new sounds, with the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album winning Album of the Year in early 1968.
Women were prominent in the early 1968 results. Bobbie Gentry was among the major winners of that ceremony. Readers wanting exact lists of nominees and winners in the women’s vocal categories should consult the Recording Academy’s official database, since the category names for that year were technical and easy to misquote.
Why the “first” is a moving target
It is tempting to pin the milestone on one name, but several factors make that unreliable:
- A broad female vocal award existed from the first ceremony, so women were already honoured for singing at the outset.
- The “pop” label was applied to a category later, and the category was renamed afterwards.
- Different books and websites count different versions of the award as “the” pop vocal category.
The accurate summary is that women were honoured for pop-style vocals from the first ceremony in 1959, that the dedicated category was reshaped repeatedly, and that the women singers of 1967 worked in a pop world far wider than any single award could capture.