Many of the winners in the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, presented by the Recording Academy — including those in the recently renamed and expanded American Roots Music field — were announced online prior to televised ceremonies on January 31 from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
[To view the full article and see the list of winners, click here.]
The nationally renowned Cactus Café on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin may be closing later this year. Citing a desire “to minimize the impact of budgetary reductions on students and to protect student core services,” the Texas Union board of directors on Friday announced plans to “phase-out” the intimate live music venue that has attracted a wide array of local, regional, national and international touring acoustic artists since it opened in February 1979. The board’s plans are slated to take effect in August.
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Bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt, who died in 1979, is best known for having been a lead singer and guitarist with Bill Monroe back in the 1940s and for the two decades he spent with banjoist and fellow Bluegrass Boys alum Earl Scruggs as Flatt and Scruggs – a partnership that produced such bluegrass classics as “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” The U.S. House of Representatives, on Jan. 26, agreed to a sense resolution recognizing Flatt’s invaluable contribution to American art and the indelible legacy he left on bluegrass music.
[To see the full text of the resolution, click on the headline.]
Vic Chesnutt, a prolific songwriter and independent recording artist who was a favorite of critics and fellow musicians, died on Christmas Day, Dec. 25, in an Athens, Georgia hospital. He was 45 and had been in a coma following an apparent overdose of muscle relaxants earlier in the week.
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