LOS ANGELES (Feb. 16, 2011) – The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) — a national union of more than 70,000 professional performers, recording artists and broadcasters working in the entertainment and news media — today announced the recipients of the AFTRA Foundation’s 2011 AFTRA Media and Entertainment Excellence Awards (The AMEES).
Receiving honors will be Spanish-language Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrin, “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh and recording artist David Crosby.
The honorees will receive their awards at the AMEES dinner gala benefit for the AFTRA Foundation at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on March 21.
“The AFTRA Foundation is thrilled to honor three such highly talented AFTRA members,” said Shelby Scott, AFTRA Foundation President and former AFTRA National President. “Jaime, John and David have each made great contributions to their respective fields of work, to their Union and to society as a whole.”
About the Honorees
JAIME JARRIN – AMEE Award in Broadcasting
Jaime Jarrín – “the Spanish Voice of the Dodgers” – is the 2011 recipient of the AMEE Award in Broadcasting.
Born in Quito, Ecuador, Jarrín began his broadcast career at age 16, working for HCJB in his home country. Jarrín came to the United States in 1955 and soon after began working for KWKW in Los Angeles, where he was the news and sports director when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the same year he joined AFTRA. He became the club's No. 1 Spanish-language broadcaster in 1973.
Jarrín has been the recipient of many honors over his career, including induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998 in Cooperstown, NY as the recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award. Jarrín was also named as baseball's all-time best Spanish-language broadcaster based on "longevity, continuity, network coverage, kudos, language, popularity, persona, voice knowledge and miscellany." He was rated 28th overall among all broadcasters.
In addition to his work calling Dodger games, Jarrín has been at the center of many international news broadcasts, including the funeral of President John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II's visit to America and several important meetings between foreign leaders and Presidents Richard Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as the interpreter from 1980-81 for Mexican pitching phenom Fernando Valenzuela. Valenzuela, also an AFTRA member, became an analyst in 2003 and continues to work alongside Jarrín.
Jarrín has also called more than 30 world championship boxing title bouts throughout the world for radio and television stations in Latin America, including the “Thrilla in Manila” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. He has called 19 All-Star Games and 25 World Series, including the 2005 Fall Classic in which he served as the emcee for MLB's Latin Legends ceremony. His broadcasts of the All-Star Game, League Championship Series and World Series on CBS, the Latina Broadcasting Network, Cadena Latina and Caracol and 1989 to 1999 were carried on more than 300 stations. In March 2006, Jarrín served as a play-by-play announcer for the inaugural World Baseball Classic.
To read Jarrín’s full bio, go to www.aftra.com/JaimeJarrin.htm
JOHN WALSH – AMEE Award in Entertainment
“America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh is the 2011 recipient of the AMEE Award in Entertainment.
A member of AFTRA since 1986, Walsh is known internationally as a crime fighter and victims’ rights advocate and the host of “America’s Most Wanted” – the groundbreaking reality program that’s helped law enforcement capture more than 1,100 dangerous fugitives and brought home more than 50 missing children since its debut in 1988. He never sought the role, but this has been his life since July 27, 1981 – the day his only child, Adam, was abducted from a mall near his home in Hollywood, Florida. Adam was found murdered two weeks later.
Born in Auburn, New York and educated at the University of Buffalo, Walsh moved to Florida with his wife, Revé, and had been a successful hotel developer before Adam’s tragic murder.
The Walshes’ experience showed them that the nation was in desperate need of leadership in the fight to protect children. Out of their pain, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) was created in 1984, after President Ronald Reagan signed the “Missing Children’s Assistance Act.” The NCMEC is the premier child protection non-profit, providing invaluable resources to parents, children and law enforcement in the United States and internationally.
A hero to law enforcement, Walsh has been honored numerous times by many local, state and federal agencies. In addition to being named “Man of the Year” by both the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI, Walsh was also made an honorary U.S. Marshal. He is only the third man to receive this honor in the organization’s two hundred-plus-year history.
Walsh’s three best-selling books: Tears of Rage, No Mercy and Public Enemies, tell his family’s story and about the toughest AMW cases he’s worked on.
For Walsh’s full bio, go to www.aftra.com/JohnWalsh.htm
DAVID CROSBY – AMEE Award in Sound Recordings
Music legend David Crosby is the 2011 AMEE Award in Sound Recordings.
A founding member of two seminal rock bands – the Byrds and Crosby Stills and Nash - Crosby is a two-time inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When the singer/songwriter stepped onstage in front of some 500,000 music and life-celebrating fans at Woodstock in 1969 as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – Crosby both shared and contributed to what many see as the generation’s defining moment. In the three decades that followed, he’s continued to be an artistic firebrand with over a dozen albums by Crosby, Stills and Nash, and CSNY, solo projects and duet albums with fellow band member Graham Nash.
The son of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby (“High Noon,” “Tabu,” among others), the performer grew up in Santa Barbara, and then migrated south to Los Angeles during the folk music revival of the early 60’s. During this period he also traveled extensively throughout the United States as a solo singer/songwriter, honing his craft alongside such luminaries as Fred Neil, Cass Elliot, Bob Dylan and many others, performing dates at college hootenannies and smoke-filled coffeehouses. After returning to LA, in 1963, he eventually joined forces with fellow musicians Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, and Michael Clarke as the Byrds -- a ground-breaking band that virtually gave birth to the Folk/Rock genre, possibly the most important wave in pop music during the mid-60’s.
In 1968, Crosby had begun writing songs with Stephen Stills, who at the time partnered with Neil Young in Buffalo Springfield. The pair knew they had struck musical gold when they invited singer-songwriter Graham Nash, from the British band the Hollies, to add his voice to theirs on two songs, "Helplessly Hoping" and "You Don't Have To Cry.”
The trio released their debut album in 1969, Crosby, Stills and Nash. The group’s unprecedented sound, superb musicianship and collection of enduring original songs sent the album straight to number one on the charts. That summer, Neil Young joined the congregation, and the Woodstock performance cemented their identity as an iconic presence in rock music, and thirty years of successful tours and albums have repeatedly reaffirmed that fact.
In 1970, Crosby also released his solo debut, “…If I Could Only Remember My Name,” a record that is still considered one of the greatest albums of the 1970’s. Although overflowing with sterling guest performances by Neil Young, Graham Nash as well as members of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Santana, the innovative album clearly illustrated how much Crosby had grown as a truly original and imaginative musician.
Crosby still tours and records solo, with Crosby/Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
This Spring and Fall he will be touring with Graham Nash (Crosby/Nash); the pair have just launched a new record label, Blue Castle Records, and are releasing a recording of a show they performed at Dorothy Pavilion in 1971. The Album, “Another Stoney Evening,” will be released on March 22nd.
For more information on David Crosby, go to www.aftra.com/DavidCrosby.htm or www.davidcrosby.com.
About the Awards
AFTRA National First Vice President and award-winning broadcast journalist, Bob Edwards, will serve as Master of Ceremonies at the 2011 AMEES. Edwards is the host of “The Bob Edwards Show” on XM Satellite Radio. Before joining XM in 2004, he hosted National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Morning Edition” for more than 24 years. Edwards was inducted in the national Radio Hall of Fame in 2004 and is a past AMEE Award in Broadcasting recipient.
The AMEES were created in 2003 to honor AFTRA members for excellence in their craft and their contributions to the fields of media and entertainment. Proceeds from the 2011 AMEE Awards go to benefit the AFTRA Foundation, an independent non-profit organization separate from AFTRA that provides support to charitable and educational endeavors critical to AFTRA members, including the George Heller Memorial Scholarship which provides scholarships to AFTRA members and their dependents for academic study and the International News Safety Institute, the only global organization solely dedicated to the safety of journalists and other news professionals.
Past AMEE recipients include the late "60 Minutes" producer Don Hewitt and his team of CBS on-air journalists including the late Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Dan Rather, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Bob Simon, Lesley Stahl and Mike Wallace. Other past honorees include Smokey Robinson, Jeanne Cooper, Vin Scully, Don LaFontaine, Cedric The Entertainer, Willard Scott, Roberta Flack, Bob Edwards, Don Hastings, Susan Flannery, Amber Tamblyn, Patti Austin, Robert Hager, Sam Donaldson, Susan Lucci, vocalist Maureen McGovern, Sam Moore, Charles Osgood, the cast of “Sesame Street” and Juanes.
For sponsorship and ticket information, go to www.aftra.com/amees2011.htm or by e-mail to amees@aftra.com.
About the AFTRA Foundation
Founded by the AFTRA National Board of Directors in 1997 as a separate legal entity from the union, the AFTRA Foundation is a charitable and educational organization funded through tax-deductible voluntary contributions, grants and bequests—not AFTRA member dues—to support projects outside the scope of normal activities at AFTRA, including charitable endeavors, special conferences, studies, seminars and other events.
About AFTRA
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFL-CIO, are the people who entertain and inform America. In 32 Locals across the country, AFTRA members work as actors, broadcasters, singers, dancers, announcers, hosts, comedians, disc jockeys, and other performers across the media industries including television, radio, cable, sound recordings, music videos, commercials, audio books, non-broadcast industrials, interactive games, the Internet and other digital media. The 70,000 professional performers, broadcasters, and recording artists of AFTRA are working together to protect and improve their jobs, lives, and communities in the 21st century. From new art forms to new technology, AFTRA members embrace change in their work and craft to enhance American culture and society.
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