Blige, Cher, Osbourne, Frampton and Foreigner get into Rock Hall
After failing to even be nominated in previous years, Cher, Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Ozzy Osbourne and Kool & The Gang will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2024, alongside repeat nominees Mary J. Blige, Dave Matthews Band and hip-hop innovators A Tribe Called Quest.
In a novel move, Frampton encouraged concertgoers to vote for him during his April 14 show at The Shell in San Diego by having the QR code for the ballot projected onto the large video screen behind him on stage.
Five other artists who were also on the ballot for the first time this year did not earn enough votes to be inducted, specifically, Oasis, Lenny Kravitz, Sadé, Mariah Carey and Sinéad O’Connor, who died last July. Also failing to make the cut for induction were two repeat nominees — Jane’s Addiction and the hiphop duo Erik B. & Rakim.
This year’s inductees were announced during Sunday night’s telecast of “American Idol” by Lionel Richie, a 2022 hall inductee, and show host Ryan Seacrest. The list of 2024 honorees also includes six artists who will receive the hall’s Musical Excellence and Musical Influence awards, two categories chosen by the hall’s in-house committees.
The 2024 Musical Excellence Award honorees include Dionne Warwick, Norman Whitfield, Jimmy Buffett (who died last September from cancer) and the pioneering Detroit proto-punkrock band MC5, whose leader, Wayne Kramer, died of cancer Feb. 2. The final iteration of the group, which included San Diego guitarist Stevie Salas playing alongside fellow guitarist Kramer, toured in 2022.
MC5 had been nominated for induction in six previous years but did not earn enough votes to gain induction. Buffett, whose final concert of his career with his Coral Reefer Band took place last May at San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium, was never nominated.
This year’s Musical Influence Award honorees include England’s John Mayall and the late Alexis Korner, who in the 1960s jointly spearheaded the blues boom in the UK that fueled the launching of such bands as the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Fleetwood Mac and Cream. At 90, Mayall appears to be the oldest of this year’s hall honorees.
The third 2024 Musical Influence Award honoree is the late Big Mama Thornton, whose galvanizing recordings of the songs “Hound Dog” and “Ball and Chain” greatly influenced the subsequent versions of those songs by, respectively, Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin.
Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first recording and are honored for their “originality, impact and influence.” Ballots are cast by the hall’s more than 1,000 voting members, which include previous inductees and an array of music industry professionals, including this writer.
In 2013, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame introduced its “fan vote,” in which the top five nominees that fans vote online for are submitted as one official ballot that is counted with the rest of the Voting Committee’s. The quantitative significance of the fans’ choices is minimal — accounting for about 0.3% of the total — but creates a fair amount of buzz.
This year’s two top fan-vote earners are Dave Matthews Band, with 586,745 votes, and Frampton, with 529,077. This year’s online fan voting was supposed to continue until Friday, but instead concluded April 15.
The hall’s final 2024 honoree, powerhouse music, film and TV industry executive Suzanne de Passe, will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award. It is named after the co-founder of Atlantic Records.
The 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will take place Oct. 19 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland and will stream live on Disney+ and be available on Hulu the following day. An edited airing of the ceremony will be broadcast on ABC at a later date.