Polka Tragedy

Two summers ago at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Jimmy Sturr hit the stage and stirred up the crowd -- ha ha -- with his full-scale polka band. Allan and I got fairly into it; it was a good time. Jimmy Sturr has won 18 Grammy awards for his polka recordings.

And now, he will win no more. The Recording Academy has eliminated the Polka category from the Grammy awards.

Of his Grammy award winning, Jimmy said

“There are a lot of great bands in the polka field. I’m not going to say I’m the best band in the whole world, but we’re just as good as any. But this put us over and above. It made us almost, almost a household word.”

In other -- perhaps more relevant to Sound of Blackbirds readers -- news, the "Contemporary Folk/Americana" award will be split into two categories: Contemporary Folk and Americana. I have always found the folk nominations for the Grammy awards fairly odd -- in terms of who is in what category -- so I look forward to seeing who gets classified as Americana versus Traditional Folk versus Contemporary Folk now.