Beck, Sam Smith score big at the Grammys

Beck Hansen's album Morning Phase, a becalmed collection from the changeling California songwriter, was surprise winner for album of the year at the 57th annual Grammy awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday. The show was otherwise dominated by 22-year-old British crooner Sam Smith, who won best new artist as well as song and record of the year, and pop vocal performance.

"This is the best night of my life," said Smith, in picking up his crowning record of the year trophy for "Stay With Me (Darkchild Version)," the song remixed by Pleasantville, N.J.-bred producer Rodney Jerkins. "I want to thank the man I wrote this song about last year. Thank you so much for breaking my heart. I got four Grammys out of it."

Highlights included Beyoncé singing a spirited version of "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and John Legend and Common teaming up on their co-penned tune "Glory," in a tribute to Ava DuVernay's civil-rights film Selma.

Beck perhaps benefitted from a split down the middle of voters for the two favorites, Beyoncé's self-titled fifth album, and In The Lonely Hour, by British newcomer Sam Smith.

When his name was called out by Prince, the presenter who said, "albums still matter, like books and black lives" - Beck looked as surprised as everyone else in the room. And when Kanye West - famous for rudely interceding on Taylor Swift on Beyoncé's behalf at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009, made a show of coming on stage before backing off, Beck said "No, come back! I need some help!"

One clue Morning Phase might have a shot came earlier when the album, which won three awards, took home best rock album over Tom Petty's Hypnotic Eye, also an upset.

Beck and Smith were hardly the only ones to go home with a handful of Golden Gramophones. Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams also won three.

Baby-faced British crooner Sam Smith was considered a lock to win, and the In The Lonely Hour singer did. "I've got to try to say something without crying," he said. "I won a Grammy! Thank you." A short while later, he was back up on stage to win his second trophy for the night, for best pop vocal album. In accepting, he said that he was making "awful music" a few years ago when he was trying to lose weight and change to make in the industry: "It was only when I started to be myself that the music started to flow and people started to listen."

Grammy weekend made news even before the ceremony started, when Bob Dylan was awarded the Music Cares Person of the Year award in a ceremony in Los Angeles on Friday night, with performances in his honor by Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, and Jack White, among others. The not so gracious Dylan used his acceptance speech to lash out at various highly regarded music figures, such as Merle Haggard, Tom T. Hall, songwriters Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and revered executive Ahmet Ertegun.

In a Philadelphia-connected win, New York University music historian Ashley Kahn won in the Liner Notes category for the never-before-issued John Coltrane album Offering: Live At Temple University, recorded at Mitten Hall on the Temple campus in 1966.

After winning on Sunday, Kahn said via e-mail: "To have been nominated - and to win - for liner notes on the music of John Coltrane leaves me overjoyed and humbled in equal measure. A truly great lady in a bright orange Punjabi dress once told me that in writing about her late husband that all she asked was to be honest in what I tried to convey; I'd like to dedicate this award to her - Turiyasangitananda Alice Coltrane."

The great majority of the 83 Grammys - more than enough to go around - are given away in a pre-show ceremony. Key winners included the late Joan Rivers, who won a Spoken Word award for Diary Of A Mad Diva, beating out an illustrious cast that included James Franco, President Jimmy Carter, John Waters, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and disco diva Gloria Gaynor. (In the comedy album category, Weird Al Yankovic won for Mandatory Fun.)

Eminem won best rap album - from Marshall Mathers LP2, which came out in 2013, rather than his regrettable 2014 Shady XV compilation. By doing so, he made sure that the riot that might have happened if Australian rapper Iggy Azalea (frequently derided for her "blaccent") had won. Director Morgan Neville won best music film for 20 Feet From Stardom, his powerful documentary about the plight of female back up singers in a male-dominated industry.

Grammy Lifetime Achievement awards were presented to Tex-Mex accordionist Flaco Jiménez; blues guitar great Buddy Guy, late Beatle George Harrison, Australian pop brother group the Bee Gees, late great country duo the Louvin Brothers and jazz sax player Wayne Shorter. Trustees Awards were given to songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, promoter George Wein, and record producer Richard Perry, and a special technical Grammy was given to scientist and author Ray Kurzweil.

The star power at the Staples Center was nothing to sneeze at. The camera on the telecast poked around backstage, trying to impress us: "Hey, isn't that Herbie Hancock chatting it up with Ed Sheeran backstage?"

Yes, it was, and a few minutes later Sheeran was on stage fronting a band that included Hancock, as well as John Mayer and Philadelphia's own Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and Adam Blackstone - who were then joined in one of those unnecessary, nostalgic, overthought Grammy mashups by Jeff Lynne of '70s pop-rock band ELO. (A better odd coupling was Irish singer Hozier's spiritual "Take Me To Church," assisted by Scotland's Annie Lennox, who did a howling star turn on Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You.")

In one back-to-back sequence, Kanye West was followed on stage immediately by Madonna, who was introduced as "our bitch" by Miley Cyrus with Nicki Minaj. West did a solo live Auto-Tuned version of "Only One," the emotionally impactful song he wrote with Paul McCartney that's partly about the pain of knowing his late mother Donda will never know his daughter. Madonna's "Livin' For Love," from her due-in-March but already partially leaked new album Rebel Heart, was less successful, with the once-great pop superstar gamely leading the arena in a singalong of the song's chorus while accompanied by a group of male dancers wearing devil horns.

Multiple winners included Beck, who took home a best engineered album for his mellow Morning Phase and also was a surprise winner - over Tom Petty, who I figured was a shoe-in - in the rock album category, which for some reason is given away on camera during the telecast, while the rap album is not.

Beyoncé won best R&B performance for "Drunk In Love" with Jay Z, whom she referred to as "my beloved husband. I love you deep." The cut also won best R&B song, and the Recording Academy also threw Queen Bey the best surround-sound album, bringing her early total to three.

The show included a message from President Obama encouraging artists to take a stand against domestic violence and sexual assault, urging viewers to go the web site ItsOnUs.org. He was followed by a woman named Brooke Axtell who described herself as "a survivor of domestic violence" and gave a fiery speech that served as an intro to Katy Perry. In comparison to the dancing-with-sharks frivolity of the Super Bowl halftime show, this was an earnest and super-serious Perry, belting out the gospel-flavored "By The Grace Of God," from her Prism album while wearing a flowing white gown that many social media wags thought looked a lot like the gown Solange Knowles wore at her recent wedding.

With the runaway success of his Despicable Me hit "Happy," Pharrell Williams was also inevitably a major player in the awards. He won three early awards: "Happy" nabbed pop solo performance and music video, and his Girl got urban contemporary album. Misguidedly trying to duplicate last year's "Pharrell's hat" fashion coup, he dressed like a hotel bellboy in a "Happy" production number that also featured film composer Hans Zimmer and Curtis Institute-schooled classical pianist Lang Lang that came off looking like an outtake to a Wes Anderson sequel to The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Much more effective - and successfully underplayed - was the Tony Bennett-Lady Gaga interlude, in which they sang "Cheek to Cheek," the title cut from their better-than-you-might-expect duets album, which took best traditional pop vocal honors. No big production number, nothing more outrageous than Gaga's tattoo, just a confidently swinging take on a 1935 Irving Berlin standard only nine years younger than Bennett.

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