Washington
02 February 2009
The 51st annual Grammy Awards will be handed out in Los Angeles on February 8. If the wide range of categories where Roots performers appear is any indicator, this year's awards ceremony could be very rewarding for those artists.
Last year, the song "Gone Gone Gone" from the CD Raising Sand won Alison Krauss and Robert Plant the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals Grammy. This year finds the pair nominated for that award again; this time for the song "Rich Woman." And Raising Sand is one of the five Album of the Year nominees.
Neither is a category where you'd expect to find a bluegrass superstar, but then Alison Krauss isn't just another fiddle-playing singer. To date she's won 21 Grammy Awards, more than any other female artist. She's got five nominations this year, and any win will move Alison up in the rankings for all-time Grammy wins. Right now she's tied for seventh place, and the most ever won by one person is 31. At age 37, Alison is likely to be singing for many more years, so she might pass that milestone during her career.
Also in the race are Solomon Burke's Like A Fire, and Maestro, the disc celebrating Taj Mahal's four decades of making great blues, roots and reggae music. One track, "Diddy Wah Diddy," reunites Taj Mahal with The Phantom Blues Band, the group that backed him on two Grammy-winning CDs.
Best Contemporary Blues Album is just one of the Grammy races that is home to Roots music performers. This year, you can also find them vying for Country, Pop, Gospel and Folk awards. The artists are scattered because there is no "roots music category." The closest might be Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, even though one of those up for the award, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's Raising Sand, is also in contention for Album of the Year.
Joan Baez |
Joan Baez celebrated 50 years in the music business by releasing Day After Tomorrow. Although she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, a win in the "Best Contemporary Folk Album" category would be her first -win in a regular category.