Dan Fogelberg - Big Cheer at Grammys

11:02 p.m. - "Other than Pavarotti, the only big cheer during the dead people segment comes for Dan Fogelberg. Huh? Really, hardly anyone makes a peep during the whole thing, even for Lee Hazlewood or Pimp C."

Rarely will I blog about someone else's blog, but this was pretty funny. Tom Breihan blogged on 2/11/08, The Grammy Awards: A Running Diary which included a minute-by-minute (more or less) account of what happened on Grammy Night, 2008. Do yourself a favor and read it, in its entirety, at:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/statusainthood/archives/2008/02/the_grammy_awar_4.php

The blog was interesting, even entertaining, mostly, but I began to laugh aloud at the 10:49 entry, where Tom writes that Tony Bennet trips on a line while presenting an award and comments that "it is almost reassuring that the guy is finally beginning to show signs of aging." Then the "dead people segment" followed by the 11:13 "depressing old people" segment. Having finally attained the age and position in life of what some people would undoubtedly call "old" (in my sixties, retired and receiving Social Security checks), I was particularly amused by the readers' comments on the theme of "why don't these old people just crawl off somewhere and die?" and that readers would actually be honest enough to publish such ideas on the internet! I'm laughing now!

Dan Fogelberg didn't wait until he was old. At 56, he was still sailing the treacherous waters off the coast of Maine and still apparently productive at the many forms of art at which he excelled. Funny thing that Dan should receive such thunderous applause by the Grammy audience, but by no means surprising. Dan Fogelberg never received a Grammy. Arguably the finest "singer songwriter multi-instrumentalist" ever to grace the face of the earth, Dan was nominated only once, that being for his song "Times Like These" for its inclusion on the "Urban Cowboy" Soundtrack, but awards and promotion of his music were not important to Dan. He wrote for the sheer joy of the art, and he once said something to the effect of "If one song says something to one person who hears it, then I've done my job. I'm happy," but then he went on to say he'd do what he did, the way he did it, regardless of whether it reached anyone.

Amused. That's how I always felt when I would read the critical reviews trashing Dan's artistry, like the reviews routinely written by rags like Rolling Stone and music critics like Robert K. Oermann (is that name correctly "spelt"?). It was like these writers didn't have the good sense to recognize class, style and talent! What is so amusing is that the people who bought music always seemed to have a far different opinion than the critics and that after Dan's first album, Home Free went gold, he had a consecutive string of eight albums, released from 1974 through 1984, to go platinum or multi-platinum. Dan took off on his own, ignoring music trends, and in 1985 did, of all things, a bluegrass album. I was so irritated I could have eaten my socks, but, since it was Dan, I listened, and guess what? I started liking bluegrass! Well, wait a minute - I liked Dan's bluegrass and some other new-fangled bluegrass and even the old standards, so long as they were instrumental. Try as I might, I was never quite able to listen to Bill Monroe's vocals, but I loved his "Jerusalem Ridge", probably his most famous instrumental hit. Dan's bluegrass album, though it did not achieve platinum status, became the second best-selling bluegrass album of all time, right behind the classic "Old and In the Way" project by Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead), David Grisman (Dawg music), Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements and John Kahn. Last year, someone told me they thought that another bluegrass album had recently knocked Dan's "High Country Snows" down into third place, but I never could find confirmation of that fact on the web or anywhere else.

Next, Dan did a divorce album, Exiles, which didn't go platinum. Nor did his subsequent studio albums from the `90's and into this century. But, by golly, he sure had a helluva run for the decade of the mid-`70's through the mid-`80's. No one else matched it then; no one did it before Dan did, and no one has matched it since.

But I digress.

My point, several paragraphs ago, about the applause for Dan at the Grammys, was about to be this: Singer-songwriters like and appreciate Dan. They understand what he did. Artists in all genrae of music were/are Dan fans. In my single-again period which covered most of the `80's, I was a frequent concert goer, perhaps, in part, to my son being a musician, in part to both my children loving to go to concerts, and in part, my love of music and enjoying the concerts myself. From Denver to Atlanta, from San Antonio to Chicago, and numerous points in between, I've seen Dan Fogelberg in concert, and, almost without exception in the big-city venues, I would see famous, and/or currently popular, musicians in attendance. Having lived in middle Tennessee for 57% of my life, at least half the concerts were in or around Nashville, and lots, I mean lots, of new country artists went to Dan's concerts. Garth Brooks wouldn't miss one if he was in the area. Same with Suzy Bogguss and numeous others. So, with this in mind, it is not at all surprising that the announcement of Dan's name at the Grammys resulted in a substantial reaction from the crowd, which would have been comprised largely of people who knew at least a little something about music. The author of the blog, Tom Breihan, probably was not in a position to be aware of this, thus his "Huh?" in his article.

Dan was loved. Loved by his legion of fans, which included musicians. Lots of musicians.

From Ferranti and Teicher in the `50's to Peter, Paul and Mary, Ray Charles, and Andy Williams in the `60's, and on to Anne Murray, Gary Morris, James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, Rod Stewart, Bad Company, Crosby Stills & Nash, and too many more to mention in the `70's, `80's and `90's, I have never seen one other musician attending all the other concerts, just Fogelberg's.

As the e~Town commentator said on the air, after thunderous audience applause for Dan's performance:

"He's good, isn't he?"