They still have Grammy Awards? -----Original Message----- >From: Richard de Give <[email protected]> >Sent: Jun 4, 2009 10:15 PM >To: World News Now Discussion LIst ABC's <[email protected]> >Subject: (POLKA) Grammy gone! > >No more polka album Grammys for Jimmy Sturr > >By JOHN ROGERS >Associated Press Writer >LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s enough to make any serious polka fan shove his plate >of sausage aside, fling his lederhosen in the closet and go out and shed a few >tears in his beer. >The waltz is over for America’s Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, not to mention every >other squeezebox-loving, ompah-dancing fanatic who followed the Grammy Awards >each year just to learn whether Sturr would collect yet another trophy for >best polka album of the year. >Moving to ensure that its awards show remains what it called “pertinent within >the current musical landscape,” the National Academy of Recording Arts and >Sciences announced Thursday it is eliminating its best polka album category. >Although posters to Internet sites catering to polka fans (yes, there are such >places) were outraged, Sturr, who is hailed by fans the world over as the King >of Polka, was doing his best to take the news in stride. >“Sure I feel a little bad, but I’m grateful, man,” said the 58-year-old >musician who has won the best polka album trophy 18 of the past 24 years. >“The Academy did a lot, not only recognizing me but recognizing polka music,” >he continued. He added that the recognition gave him a chance to fuse polka >with pop, country, rock and folk and broaden the music’s audience as he worked >with musicians such as Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss and Bela Fleck. >Still, he wasn’t completely satisfied with the Academy’s explanation that >polka was attracting too few entries in its category. >There are millions of polka fans worldwide, Sturr noted, and hundreds of >working polka bands in this country alone. They have taken your grandfather’s >music, he said, and merged it with Tex-Mex, rock, Tejano and other forms to >create a distinctly American sound. >As Grammy-nominated player John Gora noted, one of his most popular polka >covers is the rock band Genesis’ “Follow You, Follow Me.” >“And Phil Collins liked it,” he said of the Genesis frontman. >For his part, Sturr said he suspects that if there were 20 people on the >committee that recommended dropping his category, “19 of them have never been >to a polka concert. “ >Others speculated that Sturr’s amazing record of Grammy wins helped do in the >category. >“I think the fact that it was so dominated by one artist, that kind of killed >the incentive for a lot of people to enter,” said Carl Finch, whose >Tex-Mex-Tejano-Conjunto-Polka fusion band Brave Combo upset Sturr to take the >award in 1999 and 2004. >Sturr, meanwhile, says he has no plans to stop entering the Grammys, and will >nominate his next album in whatever category he is allowed to. >That will be the folk music category, said Bill Freimuth, the Academy’s vice >president for awards. >Finch, however, worries that that kind of pigeonholing won’t go down well with >polka fans, who he says are already fed up with all the lederhosen and >accordion jokes they must endure. >“It’s not that the polka world’s not used to it,” he said of polka not getting >enough recognition. “The polka world expects it. It’s like, ’Yeah, the man did >it to us again.”’ > >>
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