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Charlie Watts to receive special honor at UK’s Jazz FM Awards later this month

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Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesBesides being a rock legend, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts is a well-known jazz aficionado, and he now will receive a special honor called the Gold Award recognizing his lifetime contribution to the genre and to blues music at the 2017 Jazz FM Awards. The ceremony, which will be held April 25 at Shoreditch Town Hall in London, is presented by the U.K. digital radio station Jazz FM in partnership with the music-event production company Serious.

“I am very grateful to be honored by Jazz FM for my contribution to Jazz and Blues,” says Watts in a statement. “I’ve always loved and been influenced by the music and its players. It was one of the reasons I wanted to be a musician myself. It’s still important that we continue to support this music to ensure it lives on for the next generations.”

Meanwhile, The Stones have been nominated in two categories at the 2017 Jazz FM Awards — Blues Artist of the Year and Album of the Year for their blues covers collection Blue & Lonesome. Bonnie Raitt also is in the running for the Blues Artist of the Year prize. Album of the Year is a fan-voted honor.

Also during the ceremony, veteran British singer/keyboardist Georgie Fame, who scored a string of solo hits in the 1960s and later toured as a member of Van Morrison‘s backing band, will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Visit JazzFMAwards.com for more details about the event.

The ceremony will take place just before the April 25 release of a new live album titled Charlie Watts Meets the Danish Radio Big Band, which captures a 2010 collaborative performance that the Stones drummer played with a local big band in Copenhagen.

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