As we ponder the results of the 2008 Grammies - and breathe a sigh of relief that Cherryholmes didn’t have to worry about being photographed with Amy Winehouse - there are yet a few more stories that bear mentioning.

On Saturday, February 9, Earl Scruggs was the recipient of a 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award at a separate Grammy ceremony in Los Angeles. Here is how he was described…

Earl Scruggs revolutionized and popularized the banjo and developed what is now known worldwide as the “Scruggs Style Picking.” His style of picking is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music. For more than 20 years, Scruggs performed with vocalist and guitarist Lester Flatt forming the most famous band in bluegrass history. But Scruggs parted with Flatt and in 1969 formed Earl Scruggs Revue with his three sons. In 2003, Scruggs received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in that same year he and Flatt were ranked No. 24 on “CMT’s 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.”

Using The Grammies as the hook, The Daily News in Newburyport, MA ran a feature over the weekend on Rounder Records. The piece by correspondent Jessica Benson looks at the humble beginnings of the company which is now among the more successful independent music labels in the United States.

“We were simply people who were music fans,” said Leighton Levy, who was an undergrad at Clark University in Worcester at the time. “There’s really no way we could have anticipated how the company was going to grow.”

It started in 1970, when Irwin was hitchhiking home to Cambridge after enjoying a fiddler’s convention down south. He was picked up by a guy who, with no formal training, had started his own record company.

Read the full article, which traces Rounder from their start to the present, online.

And one more comment regarding Merle Haggard having been refused consideration in the Best Bluegrass Album category in the Grammy voting…

This year’s winner, Jim Lauderdale, like Haggard is a country artist who made a decision to release a bluegrass project in 2007, both of which included the word “bluegrass” in its title.

This is not in any way to suggest that Jim’s award is undeserved. Bluegrass Diaries was produced and recorded by Randy Kohrs - a noted bluegrass artist, writer and producer - and aggressively promoted to bluegrass radio and media. Jim was also an active participant in last year’s IBMA convention in Nashville, and was personally involved in asking the bluegrass world to embrace his latest effort.

In the end, bluegrass purists may find fault with either Lauderdale or Haggard being considered for such an award - and we have heard from them - but does it seem odd that one is fair game while the other was labeled as “country?” My own guess is that the decision was based more on Merle Haggard’s long association as a country artist than on the actual recording itself.

We ran the story in November ‘07 when the nominating committee for the Grammy Awards determined that the latest Merle Haggard CD, The Bluegrass Sessions, was despite its title, not eligible for consideration in their Best Bluegrass Album category. By their reckoning, it was insufficiently bluegrass and was therefore ineligible.

According to a story in today’s edition of Nashville’s Tennessean, The Hag is still smarting over the decision. Never one to keep it close to the vest, he shared his thoughts with The Tennessean’s Peter Cooper.

“We intended this to be accepted by people who like bluegrass music, and I want to know how I missed that,” said Haggard, 70, whose album was judged by a screening committee — made up of anonymous industry professionals — as not containing at least 75 percent bluegrass material. “We went to No. 1 on the Billboard bluegrass chart, everybody that plays on it has bluegrass history, and we used bluegrass instruments.”

“It’s be neat if somebody came forth, stepped up and said, ‘I oppose this and this is the reason why. That seems like the decent thing to do. I want to know how I missed it, in someone’s opinion.”

The Grammy Awards will be presented on Sunday (2/10) in Los Angeles, CA.

Read the full piece on The Tennessean site.

National Public Radio’s afternoon news and information show, All Things Considered, featured an interview with Merle Haggard yesterday (1/3) about his 2007 release, The Bluegrass Sessions.

The Hag spoke with Melissa Block about his life at 70 years old and his new music, and clips from several songs on the new CD are featured.

From the interview…

One of the new tracks, “Learning to Live with Myself,” was written in his bathtub — or at least, according to Haggard, “There was water everywhere.”

“At my age, I’ve learned how to live with my spouse and I’ve learned how to live with my beautiful children,” Haggard says. “I learned how to be friends with everybody and do everything. The only thing I hadn’t learned how to do was to learn to live with myself. I think that’s probably the hardest thing we all have to do. We can lie to everybody else, but you can’t lie to yourself.”

The piece runs nearly ten minutes and you can hear the entire thing on the NPR site - where they also feature a web extra, with Haggard speaking of his fondness for Jimmie Rodgers.

The nominating committee for the National Academy Of Recording Arts & Sciences, who distribute the Grammy Awards each year, decided yesterday that the new release from Merle Haggard, titled The Bluegrass Sessions would not be eligible for Grammy consideration in the Best Bluegrass Album category in this year’s voting.

Billboard reported today that despite the CD being #1 on their Bluegrass chart the past four weeks, the new Haggard album would be considered in the Best Country Album category instead.

Chris Harris of McCoury Music, who released The Bluegrass Sessions, expressed some frustration with NARAS over this decision.

“When I contacted NARAS, they would not identify the committee, their qualifications, or why they don’t classify this album as bluegrass. Their stance just doesn’t make sense. With that said, of course, we’re grateful that members can at least vote for The Bluegrass Sessions in other country categories, including Country Album of the Year,” Harris said. “But by every reasonable definition, this is a bluegrass album, and we–Merle, Ronnie [Reno], Del [McCoury] and everyone involved in the project–think that Academy voters ought to be able to consider it for Best Bluegrass Album.”

Today’s (9/30) edition of The Chicago Sun-Times has an interview with Merle Haggard, primarily about his upcoming CD release, The Bluegrass Sessions, due out this coming Tuesday (10/2) on McCoury Music.

In the interview, the Sun-Times’ Dave Hoekstra talks with the Hag about his interest in bluegrass, and how he came to record this new project as an acoustic, bluegrass-flavored album. He also reveals this interesting tidbit:

The Bluegrass Sessions was recorded in two days last November in the front room of Ricky Skaggs’ studio outside Nashville. Haggard said he is thinking of a bluegrass tour — if the CD does well.

Read the full article on the Sun-Times web site.

McCoury Music has now posted an online video of the first recording session for his upcoming release, The Bluegrass Sessions, which we posted about a few days ago.

The video shows Hag recording Holding Things Together with Aubrey Haynie, Marty Stuart, Carl Jackson, Rob Ickes, Charlie Cushman and (presumably) Ben Isaacs.

Find the video on the McCoury Music site.

McCoury Music has made audio samples available online from their upcoming Merle Haggard CD, The Bluegrass Sessions. It is an all-acoustic project, produced by Ronnie Reno, with both Haggard songs and others he selected to sing to mark this new direction in his storied career.

The tracks were recorded during the fall of 2006, including supporting performances from Rob Ickes on dobro, Charlie Cushman on banjo, Aubrey Haynie on fiddle, Ben Isaacs on bass and Marty Stuart on mandolin. A highlight is sure to be Hag’s duet with Alison Krauss on Mama’s Hungry Eyes, which was a #1 hit for Haggard some years ago.

You can hear a sample of this, and all 12 tracks, on the McCoury Music web site. The CD is set to be officially released on October 2.

Billboard is reporting a couple of new bits of information about the upcoming Merle Haggard acoustic/bluegrass CD we had told you about late last year. We had reported that this new recording would feature Hag and some of Nashville’s top bluegrass players on a set of familiar bluegrass songs, along with some new and classic Haggard compositions, to be released on the McCoury Music label.

New from Billboard is a project title (The Bluegrass Sessions), a projected release date (October 2, 2007) and word of a duet with Merle and Alison Krauss on a new Haggard song.

Most encouraging is the following quote from the article:

“I really enjoyed doing it,” says the 70-year-old Haggard, “and I hope this is just Volume One.”

You can read the brief piece at Billboard.com.

We just got word that the Merle Haggard bluegrass CD we told you about last month is set to be released on Del McCoury’s imprint, McCoury Music, jointly with Hag Music.

Chris Harris with Rainmaker Management (Del’s media relations) shared this bit of info.

“What I’ve heard so far sounds great. Ronnie Reno produced (obviously he has the bluegrass pedigree and he was a member of Mr. Haggard’s band for about 12 years so he was a great fit) and they brought in some great pickers (Marty Stuart, Carl Jackson, Rob Ickes, Charlie Cushman, Aubrey Haynie and Ben Isaac).”

More details are expected to be announced later this week.

From Ronnie Reno, via J.D. Rhynes, who posted on the California Bluegrass Association web site, comes word that Merle Haggard is working on a bluegrass project.

That CBA news posting elicited a response from Elida Ickes on the CBA message board that her son, Rob, was playing dobro on the Haggard bluegrass sessions.

Rob said initially they all sat in a circle and just jammed on a few tunes that Merle was interested in doing. (Other players are: Aubrie Haynie, Marty Stuart, Ben Isaacs, and Charlie Cushman) Hope I spelled everyone’s name correctly and remembered everyone that was there. Then Merle said he liked this and suggested that they record just sitting in a circle jamming!!! That is what they did so it will be mostly live taping!! Rob said the first song they did was “I Wonder Where You Are Tonight.”

Another song Rob really liked is a new one that Merle wrote called, “Pray.” Rob said the whole time he could not believe he was sitting in the circle “jamming” with Merle Haggard. Again, it was the highlight of Rob’s life. He goes into the studio again today to finish up. They did 8 songs yesterday and hope to do 4 or 5 more today.

You can read the news posting on CBA’s site, and the follow-up bulletin board discussion there as well. We will try to contact some of the players and find out more about this project, which I am certainly eager to hear.

Thanks to Megan Lynch who first alerted us to this story, and Rick Cornish and Craig Wilson with CBA for their help finding the original post in their archives.