Alison Krauss

Krauss has released 14 albums, appeared on numerous soundtracks, and sparked a renewed interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Her soundtrack performances have led to further popularity, including the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, and the Cold Mountain soundtrack, which led to her performance at the 2004 Academy Awards. Platinum-selling Raising Sand (2007) was the first of her two collaborations with English rock singer Robert Plant.


As of 2019, she has won 27 Grammy Awards from 42 nominations,^[3] ranking her fourth behind Beyoncé, Quincy Jones and classical conductor Georg Solti for most Grammy Award wins overall.^[4] Krauss was the singer and female artist with the most awards in Grammy history^[5] until Beyoncé won her 28th Grammy in 2021.^[6] When Krauss won her first Grammy in 1991, she was the second-youngest winner at that time.


On November 21, 2019, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[7] She was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in September 2021.^[8]

Early life[edit]

Alison Maria Krauss^[9] was born in Decatur, Illinois,^[10][11][a] to Fred and Louise Krauss. Her father was a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1952 at age 12, and taught his native language while he earned a doctorate in psychology. He later went into the business of real estate. Her mother, an American of German and Italian descent, is the daughter of artists, and works as an illustrator of magazines and textbooks.^[12] Fred and Louise met while they were studying at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.^[13] After a brief residence in nearby Decatur, the family settled in Champaign, where Krauss was raised with her older brother, Viktor.^[14]


Krauss's mother played banjo and acoustic guitar,^[12] so Krauss was exposed to folk music at home, and she heard rock and pop music on the radio: She liked Gary Numan's synth-pop song "Cars", and rock bands such as Foreigner, Bad Company, and Electric Light Orchestra.^[15] Her brother Viktor played piano and double bass in high school, launching a career as a jazz and rock multi-instrumentalist.^[16] At her mother's insistence, Krauss began studying classical violin at age five.^[17] Krauss was reluctant to spend time practicing, but she continued with classical lessons until she was eleven.^[18] Krauss said her mother "tried to find interesting things for me to do" and "wanted to get me involved in music, in addition to art and sports".^[19] Krauss was also very active in roller skating, and in her teens she finally decided on a career in music rather than roller derby.^[17][20]


In mid-1979, Krauss's mother saw a notice for an upcoming fiddle competition at the Champaign County Fair, so she bought a bluegrass fiddle instruction book and the 1977 bluegrass album Duets by violinist Richard Greene. Krauss learned by ear to play several songs from the album, including "Tennessee Waltz", which she practiced on violin with her mother accompanying on guitar. Krauss entered the talent contest in the novice category at the age of eight, placing fourth.^[21] (This is where she first met fiddler Andrea Zonn, who won the junior division at age 10.^[22]) Krauss investigated the bluegrass genre more thoroughly after this, and she developed a knack for learning complex riffs by ear, quickly turning them into her own version.^[12] In 1981–82, Krauss performed with Marvin Lee Flessner's country dance band, in which she fiddled and sang. In September 1983, her parents bought her a custom violin made by hand in Missouri – her first adult-sized instrument.^[18] At 13, she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship,^[23] and the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America named her the "Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest".^[24] She was also called "virtuoso" by Vanity Fair magazine.^[25]


Krauss first met Dan Tyminski around 1984 at a festival held by the Society. Every current member of her band, Union Station, first met her at these festivals.^[26]