Friday, June 5, 2009

THE END OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION: NO MORE POLKA IN THE GRAMMIES...


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NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD PEOPLE TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR COUNTRY!



Local polka star Sturr says music should get recognition
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Sandy Tomcho
By Sandy Tomcho
Times Herald-Record
Posted: June 05, 2009 - 2:00 AM

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced it was eliminating the Best Polka Album category, much to the disappointment of 18-time Grammy winner and Village of Florida resident Jimmy Sturr.

"I'm just grateful that they recognized me," Sturr said from his United Polka Artists office in the villlage. "Look, I'm in the Grammy museum with my clarinet, alongside Eric Clapton and, I think, Quincy Jones."

Sturr has won 18 Best Polka Album Grammys, the most recent being this year's victory for "Let the Whole World Sing."

According to an NARAS press release, polka music didn't reflect "the current musical landscape" enough to merit its own awards category. Upon first hearing the news, Sturr said the NARAS made a mistake eliminating polka from its consideration.

"They have to recognize polka music someplace. Where, I don't know," he said. "It might be folk, maybe world music. They have to put it someplace."

Later, Bill Freimuth, the Recording Academy's vice president of awards, clarified to the Times Herald-Record that polka would still have a place at the Grammys.

"Polka music is being incorporated into folk music and we're encouraging polka artists to still make entries," Freimuth said. "They would either be entered into Contemporary Folk Album or Traditional Folk Album."

Possibly shooting for a Grammy in the folk genre, Sturr and his orchestra are releasing a new album soon: "Polka Cola: The Music That Refreshes."

"All things considered," Sturr said, "we have a lot to be thankful for."

stomcho@th-record.com

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Bizarro
Member since: 03/09/2007 
Total posts: 84 
 
On June 05, 2009 at 5:41 AM
, Bizarro said:
Stand up to them Jimmy, don't let them push you around you are a true icon, a legend.  Full Message
 
 
 
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No more polka album Grammys for Jimmy Sturr

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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