Kennedy Center Honors Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, The Apollo & More

Shakedown Street wound its way to the nation’s capital on Sunday (Dec. 8) as counterculture mingled with high arts culture at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors, where legendary rockers the Grateful Dead; blues rock songstress and guitarist Bonnie Raitt; acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; and jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer Arturo Sandoval were inducted.

In a first, the Honors this year inducted a venue, Harlem’s fabled The Apollo, in celebration of nine decades of the theater championing Black artists and culture.

The gala continues to elevate its unique mashup of celebrities, politicians and arts patrons—fun fact: former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi is still in possession of a button from a late-‘80s Dead show—and the outgoing Administration was out in full force. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff received extended applause.

Musical star power included Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, Maggie Rogers, Dave Matthews, Queen Latifah, Leon Bridges, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Don Was, Sturgill Simpson, The War and Treaty, Jackson Browne, Trombone Shorty, Doug E Fresh, Raye, Grace VanderWaal and Keb Mo.

Non-musical talent was equally sparkling. Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Al Pacino and Laurence Fishburne were among those who feted Coppola, while Letterman, Miles Teller and Chloe Sevigny shared their personal connections to the Dead. Julia Louis Dreyfus celebrated Raitt, and Dave Chappelle paid hilarious homage to The Apollo.

Bonnie Raitt
Winner of 13 Grammys, including a best song award in 2023 when her soul-stirring “And Just Like That” beat out songs by Beyonce and Harry Styles among others, Raitt was lauded as much for her activism as for her vocals and killer moves on the slide guitar.

“As you get older you reflect on how you got where you got and that’s not just in your career but life, and I attribute a lot to Bonnie,” Crow shared with Billboard before the show.

She recounted seeing Raitt perform for the first time and buying her first guitar the next day. “When you’re a 17-year-old girl and you play piano, and you go see Bonnie Raitt and she’s ripping and she’s fronting a guy band and she’s singing truth… I would never have picked up a guitar or seen myself being out front had it not been for her,” Crowe said.

Raitt’s work in social justice has been a north star for Carlile, among so many others. “I’ve lucky enough to get talk to Bonnie for hours and hours about activism and the ways we get to carry ourselves as musicians and artists,” she said on the red carpet.

“I was maybe 17 years old at a Bonnie Raitt concert when a ‘No Nukes’ guitar pick landed on the toe of my shoe, and I picked that up and I found out what she meant by that. I carry all of her messages forward. The work she’s done for Indigenous people, for women’s rights… she’s so outspoken and so musically powerful. Everything she says is backed by a thunderstorm of conviction.”

On stage and accompanied on piano by Crow, Carlile delivered an earnest rendition of “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” while Emmylou Harris and Dave Mathews stirred the heartstrings with their take on “Angel From Montgomery,” on which Raitt famously dueted with songwriter John Prine. Julia Louis Dreyfus praised Raitt’s authenticity, noting: “You know it’s Bonnie. It’s all red hair and no bullshit.” Jackson Browne, who noted his friend of 50 years “never stopped growing and expanding herself and her impulses as an artist,” before joining Crow, James Taylor and Arnold McCuller to croon “Nick of Time,” the title track from Raitt’s 1990 album that took home a Grammy album of the year.

Arturo Sandoval
Sandoval, renowned for blending Afro-Cuban jazz, bebop and straight-ahead jazz, performed in 1990 at the Honors tribute to his mentor Dizzy Gillespie. He embraced his turn in the spotlight by treating his fellow honorees and other guests at the White House dinner the evening before the gala with a spicy rendition of “God Bless America.” And well-wishers including Andy Garcia, Debbie Allen, Chris Botti and Cimafunk returned the favor on stage.

Fellow Cuban-born Garcia, who played Sandoval in the 2000 docudrama “For Love or Country,” peppered Sandoval’s string of accomplishments—winning four Grammys, five Latin Grammys and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, among them—with personal narratives: “He let me play in his band, but only if I brought the sandwiches.”

Allen described her relationship with Sandoval as a “lifelong creative marriage” that began at the Kennedy Center in 1996, and Botti described Sandoval as “the trumpet master” before he put his own trumpet stylings to a stirring version of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.”

The Apollo
The Apollo served as the launching pad for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross and Lauryn Hill, and Queen Latifah brought the audience through its decades of evolution.

Husband and wife duo The War and Treaty performed a gorgeous medley of hits by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, while Savion Glover performed a high-spirited tap dance routine.

Comedian Chappelle recounted his first, horrifying experience performing at Amateur Night after winning a contest when he was just 15. “Everybody started booing. It was like I was outside my body watching,” he said, before waxing sincere. “My favorite part of freedom is art. The Apollo theater is a church where we could talk like ourselves, to ourselves.”

Francis Ford Coppola
Coppola’s segment was, in a word, legendary. The tribute to the five-time Oscar winner, whose anthology includes The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, American Graffiti and Patton, brought out Hollywood heavy-hitters Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Laurence Fishburne.

His sister Talia Shire, nephew Jason Schwartzman and granddaughter Gia Coppola also shared tributes and Grace VanderWaal, who appears in Coppola’s new film Megalopolis, performed a raspy, rousing version of “The Impossible Dream.”

Pacino mixed heart and humor, noting Coppola continues to break the cardinal rule in Hollywood: never invest in your own films. “For Apocalypse Now, he put up his house, with his wife and three kids in it. I know, I was there,” he quipped.

Noting without Coppola he wouldn’t have his career, DeNiro—whom the filmmaker cast in “The Godfather: Part II”—said, “And it’s not just me. Francis generously brings all of us into his family, into his world, into his dreams. And what dreams they are. Beautiful. Epic. Impossible.”

After sharing a few funny anecdotes, Scorsese compared his friend to visionary early pioneers of cinema because “he reinvents, he has the same spirit they had and constantly, time and time again, film after film and decade after decade, he reinvents, always expanding into new territory.”

The Grateful Dead
At 60 years and still truckin’, the Grateful Dead—whose original members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bobby Weir were in attendance—is mythological in its organic cultivation of community and the live show experience.

“The Grateful Dead was a dance band, and people like to dance and in those days there weren’t a lot of people dancing so that’s where the community started and the music just moved from there,” Hart told Billboard. “And we grew with the music.”

Weir broke it down like this: “We had no plan, we had no itinerary. We were just playing; that’s all we’ve ever done. Our entire agenda has been, Let’s make some more music.”

Pre-show, Maggie Rogers shared how her stint playing with Dead & Company in 2019 at Madison Square Garden completely changed her touring routine. “Before, I was playing basically the same set every night—and there’s a beautiful meditation in that repetition—but since then, I have my whole catalog on fridge magnets on the bus and we’re constituting a new set list every night. They showed me what it’s like to relax into the continence of your own musicianship.”

The presence of guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995, and bass player Phil Lesh, who died in October, was palpable throughout the evening. Lesh’s son Graham said pre-show his father had been excited when he learned about the band’s induction and “it was a great chance for the band to connect and revel in how much of an honor this was. It’s kind-of a big wow, what they accomplished.”

Graham Lesh was part of a stellar jam band that also included Don Was and Sturgill Simpson, backing four tunes that got some in the house up on their feet. Rogers and Leon Bridges dueted on “Fire on the Mountain,” Simpson sung “Ripple,” Matthews and Tedeschi grooved through “Sugaree,” and then all came together for show closer “Not Fade Away,” a nod to the band’s use of the Buddy Holly paean to enduring love to wrap countless shows.

Done+Dusted returned for a third year as executive producer, in association with ROK Productions. The special will air on Dec. 22 on CBS and stream on Paramount+.