Los Angeles, CA (October 31, 2022)—Every engineer dreams of owning a Grammy Award at some point, and last week, the opportunity came up to take home a Best Engineered Recording trophy for capturing Stevie Wonder no less.
Of course, the catch is that the Grammys weren’t held last week, and the trophy in question was already awarded back in 1973 for work on the classic album, Innervisions—and since time machines don’t exist to take engineers back to participate in those sessions, the Grammy was in fact auctioned off last week. The Best Engineered Recording award sold last Thursday night for $16,106 at an event held by Nate D. Sanders Auctions.
The Grammy plaque reads “National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences / Robert Margouleff & Malcolm Cecil / Best Engineered Recording-1973 / Innervisions.”
For the album, Margouleff and Cecil were associate producers on the album, and programmers for Wonder’s ARP and Moog synths and were the creators of the legendary T.O.N.T.O. synthesizer that was used on the classic tracks “Living for the City,” “Higher Ground” and “Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing.” In addition to this Grammy, Innervisions won the Album of the Year award that year at the Grammys, while “Living for the City” won Best R&B Song. is considered among the greatest albums of all time, placed at #34 by Rolling Stone in its list of the Greatest 500 Albums of All-Time.
Bidding for the Grammy began at $8,000.
