It’s GRAMMY season and this year’s awards announcement has brought something special for blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Joe Bonamassa. On December 6th, 2016 Joe received his very first Grammy nomination for his work as a solo artist. The nomination is in the category of Best Traditional Blues Album for Joe’s latest #1 Billboard Blues album Live at the Greek Theatre.

The Grammy Awards, presented by The Recording Academy, are the preeminent peer-recognized honor for musical excellence. The Grammy’s are the music industry’s most prestigious awards and receiving a nomination is quite a distinction. The awards are given to musicians and other industry personnel on the basis of artistic or technical achievement.

The Recording Academy received nearly 22,000 submissions for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards across 84 different categories. With those numbers in mind, getting nominated for an award is an incredible achievement.

The Grammy Awards have a long and illustrious history of recognizing music industry icons and legends. The first annual Grammy Award ceremony was held on May 4, 1959 and winners included heavy hitters of jazz, traditional vocal, and pop music including Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Count Basie, and Frank Sinatra.

The Award for Best Traditional Blues Album was founded in 1983 and in its inaugural year the award went to Clarence Gatemouth Brown for his album Alright Again. Other winners of this highly prestigious blues award have included B.B. King, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, and Etta James.

This year’s Best Traditional Blues Album award features a strong class of contenders including Joe, Lurrie Bell, Luther Dickinson, Vasti Jackson, and Bobby Rush. Although Joe has been nominated previously for a Grammy in 2014 for his collaborative album SeeSaw with Beth Hart, and has appeared as a guest on a variety of other Grammy nominated albums, the 2017 Grammy’s represent Joe’s first time being honored by the Grammy’s as a solo artist.

Some people are surprised that Joe has been nominated in the category of Traditional Blues Album rather than Contemporary Blues Album. Although Joe is known for his enthralling, non-traditional brand of guitar-based blues rock, over the last few years Joe has been spending some time revisiting the grand history of the blues.

With albums like Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks and Live at the Greek Theatre, Joe has been exploring the music of classic blues icons like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and B.B. King. This has been a thrilling journey for Joe because this music has had such a profound influence on him and has been so meaningful throughout his entire life. Moreover, exploring the music of the classic blues greats is a way for Joe to help revitalize an art form that has been such a crucial component of the American cultural fabric.

In this way, he is able to reinvigorate a classic American music and reinterpret it in a manner that has riveted new audiences that may not be so familiar with the originals. This is an extension of the mission of Joe’s Keeping the Blues Alive foundation that Joe founded, in part, to ensure that there is a vital and healthy future for a genre that is so important to him.

Joe is deeply humbled and grateful to be nominated for an award that has honored so many tremendous blues musicians of the past. In response to the nomination, Joe says, “On behalf of my band, crew, producer Kevin Shirley, manager Roy Weisman and everyone at J R Adventures, we are very honored to be on this list.”