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Grammy producer bowing out

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With this Sunday’s Grammy ceremony to be his last after 40 years of producing it, Ken Ehrlich could be excused for creating a few moments in the show to look back on his own legacy, which includes creating indelible moments that will live in pop consciousness forever: Aretha Franklin singing “Nessun dorma,” Beyonce shaking and shimmying alongside Prince, and Eminem and Elton John performing together.

But that’s not how Ehrlich wanted to bow out, with the focus on himself. So, once again, he’s creating what he hopes will be a magical moment with an amalgam of performers: John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, Camila Cabello, Joshua Bell, Gary Clark Jr., Lang Lang, Common, Jack Antonoff and the New Orleans band War and Treaty, singing the classic song from the 1980 movie “Fame”: “I Sing The Body Electric.”

“It’s the standard of maybe one of the best pieces of film music that I’ve ever seen,” says Ehrlich of the song, which was originally sung by the film’s stars, including Grammy winner Irene Cara.

The performance, which will also include a dance by Misty Copeland, will be among the last of the evening as Ehrlich says his goodbye.

“It’s kind of been around in my head over the years, but it really didn’t come into play until I started thinking about what I did want to do this year,” he told The Associated Press in an interview last week. “It was pretty plain to me that, you know, rather than to put together a montage of great Grammy moments, which everybody has seen now a lot of times — that this was a fresh way of doing something that really represented what I’ve tried to do with the Grammys. And it’s consistent with what the mission of the academy is with regard to music education and music of the schools.”

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