Grammy® Awards Sing The Blues

This year's Grammy® Award nominations were announced yesterday for the 51st Annual Grammy® Awards ceremony and, as unlikely as it seems, the organization seems to have mostly gotten it right this time around.

Sadly, blues music receives little or no respect from The Recording Academy, evidenced by the fact that while other categories (including the dreaded "pop") hand out multiple awards, recognizing individual vocal performances and even instrumental performances, blues music can boast of only two award categories.

But in these two lone categories, the academy has made some wise choices this year. For the "Best Traditional Blues Album" award, Elvin Bishop's The Blues Rolls On (Delta Groove Music), Buddy Guy's Skin Deep (Silvertone Records), John Lee Hooker Jr's All Odds Against Me (Steppin' Stone Records), B.B. King's One Kind Favor (Geffen Records), and Pinetop Perkins' Pinetop Perkins & Friends (Stoneagle Music/Telarc) received nominations.

In the category of "Best Contemporary Blues Album," Marcia Ball's Peace, Love & BBQ (Alligator Records), Solomon Burke's Like A Fire (Shout! Factory), Dr. John's City That Care Forgot (429 Records), Taj Mahal's Maestro (Head Up), and Irma Thomas' Simply Grand (Rounder Records) got the nod.

The documentary film Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, by directors Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon, also received a nomination as "Best Long Form Music Video." Stax Records, of course, was home to such blues and R&B greats as Albert King, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, and many more.

The 51st Annual Grammy Awards show will be held on February 8, 2009 in Los Angeles. We'll revisit the list of nominees again before the show and make our predictions then.

Photo courtesy Delta Groove Music