Krauss shuts out mainstream country artists

The big night for festival favorites rolled on with Emmylou Harris, John Prine and Alison Krauss scoring significant wins, in addition to the earlier announced awards for Tim O'Brien, Del McCoury and the ubiquitous Ms. Krauss. The near shutout of mainstraeam country artists from many of the major country music categories leads to some inevitable quibbling about the Grammy voting procedures.

I don't know enough about how the voting is done to fully understand (here's a Billboard article" that sheds some light), but I presume that academy voters from other genres tilt the results toward rootsier artists at the expense of the Nashville mainstream. Not that I am complaining, but that could explain the discrepancy in the results in the country music categories in the Grammies versus, say, the winners at the Country Music Association awards, where Gretchen Wilson, Rascal Flatts, and LeeAnn Womack won the corresponding categories.

By the way, with her three awards last night, Alison Krauss now has 20 Grammies in her collection, seventh among all musicians on the all-time list. She is quoted today by Reuters as unable to explain her success with Grammy voters. "It's amazing. We make records for ourselves and we send them in (to the label) when we're done. We don't have any meetings with anybody."