The Batesville Daily Guard reports that Dennis Crouch, T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller will be appearing with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for their Grammy Performance. According to Associate Editor Larry Stroud:

Dennis Crouch, formerly of Strawberry, will perform with the backing band for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss during the 51st Annual Grammy Awards show which will be aired live Sunday night on CBS from Staples Center in Los Angeles.

“We have a five-minute spot,” Crouch said.

Crouch, who plays upright bass, said he will be part of a four-piece band backing Plant and Krauss. Other band members are Los Angeles musicians T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller on guitars and Jay Bellerose on drums.

Plant is the former Led Zeppelin front man and legendary rocker, while Krauss is a bluegrass superstar. Together, they won a Grammy in 2008.

Crouch said the performers have not yet been told what time during the three-hour show they will perform. For the show’s starting time, check local TV listings.

Krauss and Plant are nominated for 2009 Grammys in five categories, including best album for “Rising Sand,” which went platinum (sold 1 million or more) in the U.S. and sold between 4 million and 5 million copies overseas, Crouch said.

“I played on the record and did the world tour with them. We went to 10 countries,” he said. The tour took three months.”

Odetta (Holmes), often called the Voice of the Civil Rights Movement died Tuesday, December 2, 2008. She was 77. Odetta had been ill for some time, but she continued to perform.

Odetta’s manager, Doug Yeager, writes:

“Just seven weeks ago, she performed before tens of thousands of fans at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with Emily Lou Harris, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, T-Bone Burnett and Wavy Gravy sitting mesmerized below her at the stage.”

Bob Dylan credits Odetta with being the thing that turned him on to folk singing. Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks said that her favorite song was anything that Odetta sang. She marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and performed for President John Kennedy. She had hoped to sing at the inauguration of Barack Obama.

New York Times obituary

Robert and Alison offered up a poignant and sometimes funny tribute to T-Bone Burnett at the TEC awards where Burnett was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Here is a video of their speech.

Raising Sand was also presented with a sound recording award and T-Bone and Robert had the room laughing:

Mix Foundation Press Release:
Twenty-one-time Grammy winner Alison Krauss, and rock legend Robert Plant presented the Hall of Fame award to Burnett—together delivering a poetic appreciation of his knowledge of American musical history and dedication to the craft of recording. Both returned to the stage later in the evening with Burnett and his production team when their collaborative project, Raising Sand, won the TEC Award for Record Production/Album.

photo by Dave Vann

San Francisco Chronicle Senior Pop Music writer Joel Selvin caught Robert and T-Bone enjoying the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival on Saturday as spectators. He writes:

“It keeps getting better,” said T Bone Burnett, who played the Friday afternoon concert with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss and returned yesterday with Plant just to watch Ralph Stanley, whose “O Death” on the multi-million-selling “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack Burnett produced.

“This is the best music festival in the country,” he said. “No, in the world.”

The 2008 TEC Awards were presented on October 3, 2008 in San Francisco California. Raising Sand won an excellence in creativity award for Record Production/Album.

In addition, T-Bone Burnett was inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame recognizes those whose careers have best exemplified the spirit of creative and technical excellence in professional audio.

Raising Sand, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Recording Engineers: Stacy Parrish, Mike Piersante, Jason Wormer
Mixing Engineer: Mike Piersante
Mixing Facility: Electro Magnetic Studios, Los Angeles
Producer: T-Bone Burnett
Recording Studios: Electro Magnetic Studios, Los Angeles, Sage & Sound Recording, Hollywood, CA, Sound Emporium, Nashville, TN, The Village Recorder, Los Angeles
Mastering Engineer: Gavin Lurssen
Mastering Facility: Lurssen Mastering, Hollywood, CA

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will induct T-Bone Burnett into the TEC Hall of Fame on Friday, October 3 in San Francisco. Burnett is being honored for his achievements a a musician, composer and producer.

Raising Sand is also nominated at the event for Creative Achievement in Record Production.

T-Bone Burnett is working to put a system of standards in place so that the CD the consumer buys is of the quality that the record’s producer had intended. His system, titled CODE, is the product of several years of research with a team of engineers. Burnett has applied for several patents in conjunction with this system.

Burnett was spurred to put his system in action when the first pressing of the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss CD, Raising Sand, did not sound as he intended. Since then he has approached labels, pressing plants and engineers in an effort to set quality standards for audio recordings.

The first CODE release was “Life, Love, Death and Freedom” from John Mellencamp. Elvis Costello’s 2009 release will be the next.

Read more about it

Sam Phillips, who wrote “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” from the Raising Sand album, commented about the song in advance of a Chicago-land appearance.

Of “Sister Rosetta”, Phillips said: “The last thing I expected was to have this song on the Robert and Alison record. T-Bone and I, even having gone through all we’ve gone through, still care very much for each other. He says to Robert and Alison, ‘You have to listen to my ex-wife’s song.’ And Robert said something like, ‘Your ex-wife’s song? Wow, that’s not something you hear everyday.’ I just think Alison’s version of it is beautiful.”

Read Greg Kot’s article