10 Historical Facts You Should Know (But Probably Don’t)

4. Three Presidents Of The United States Have Won A Grammy Award

As soon as you read that fact you either thought: “no way!” or you took a few seconds to try and guess which ones it would have been. I can’t really remember the first time I heard this one but at first, I thought some presidents had made jazz albums in their old age, in a similar way to what Hugh Laurie has done and they realised their real dream before it was too late.

Instead though, the Grammies have all been for spoken word but unfortunately, this doesn’t mean the rap kind of albums that we might have imagined.

Of course, I have held off putting the winners in the first paragraph just so they didn’t catch your eye before you had the opportunity to guess even though I would put money on everyone imagining Obama won one and he did. In fact, he won two. He has nothing on Jimmy Carter though, a man who holds a place in my heart for his attempt at a local Geordie accent at Newcastle Airport in the 1970s and of course his work building homes for the poor.

Others may know Carter as ‘History’s Greatest Monster’ thanks to the Simpsons but whatever you think of the man, he has won not one, not two but three Grammy awards and even has a fourth nomination.

The other president to win a Grammy, like Obama, has two of them although Slick Willie edges it due to his third nomination. Not only has Bill Clinton won two Grammy awards his wife also has one and she got hers way before him. Some like the Clintons, some don’t, some prefer Bill, some Hillary but my opinion on the power couple is now completely based on a comparison to Jay Z and Beyoncé, just a little less divisive.