The Grammy Awards were created in the late 1950s by a group of major recording-industry executives who formed what became The Recording Academy (originally the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) as a music- world equivalent to the Oscars and Emmys. Their idea grew out of the Hollywood Walk of Fame project, when they realized many important music figures would never get sidewalk stars, so they designed a separate award to honor achievement in recorded music, first given for work from 1958 and formally presented at the inaugural Grammy ceremonies in 1959.