

Alison Krauss was only 19 when she won the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy for I’ve Got That Old Feeling, but you’d be forgiven for thinking she was a decade or three older. It’s not the material so much as the sense of Krauss—a fiddler with a crystalline voice who’d been collecting awards since childhood—being able to deliver it plainly and without airs, lending songs like “Steel Rails” and “I’ve Got That Old Feeling” a clarity remarkable at any age. More importantly, the album managed to make the laced-up sound of traditional bluegrass pop—a sleight of hand that went on to define Krauss’ career.