As the all-time, best-selling recording artist in history with sales approaching a staggering one billion units worldwide, Elvis Presley has been the recipient of every imaginable sales award offered by the music industry; the majority of his unprecedented sales success coming since his death in 1977. Record sales, airplay, and chart success, however, did not translate to recognition by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS) on the same grand scale in regards to Presley. Although the most influential and critically acclaimed recording output of Presley's career occurred prior to the establishment of NARAS in 1958, even if the organization had been established at the outset of the rock era, a few years earlier, recognition for Presley or any other worthy pioneers of the rock & roll or rhythm & blues idiom would have been unlikely since the genres were generally held in low regard by voting members at the time, most of whom were members of the generation that preceded the rock era. Elvis did garner a very respectable fourteen Grammy nominations during his lifetime, and was honored by NARAS as the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1971. The NARAS Hall of Fame, established in 1973, has since honored six of Presley's most enduring recordings: That's All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, Are You Lonesome Tonight, and Suspicious Minds. Presley's three Grammy wins, incidentally, were all for gospel recordings: the 1967 album, "How Great Thou Art;" the 1974 live recording of the song, "How Great Thou Art;" and the Grammy trophy offered here for the 1972 album, "He Touched Me." The engraved plaque reads: "National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences...Elvis Presley...Best Inspirational Performance...1972...'He Touched Me'." Grammy trophies rarely appear in the marketplace, and the opportunity to obtain an example as prestigious as this, presented to an icon that influenced music and culture so profoundly during the second half of the twentieth century, may never present itself again. The Gramophone trophy sits atop a wooden base, is 7" in height, and in excellent condition. Estimate $60,000-$80,000.