Carrie Underwood

ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS

And The Winner … Will Not Be Televised

The Grammy Awards are bad enough, what with presenting the bulk of the awards—the ones we really care about, of course—off camera and loading the show itself mainly with pop/rap superstar hokum.

But leave it to the Academy of Country Music to really turn the legitimate award show concept upside down.

Dean Dillon

In what reads like a preemptive strike, the ACM, via a press release, has announced “the winners of awards that will not be televised” during next month’s ACM Awards show (April 6), foremost among them, the late Jack Clement, Dean Dillon, Kris Kristofferson and the late Buck Owens (they’re getting the so-called Poet’s Award—though I’ve always considered them songwriters); Merle Haggard (the Crystal Milestone Award, given to “an artist or industry leader to commemorate a specific, remarkable achievement,” in the case of Hagg, who’s won everything else, 50 years in the biz); Ronnie Milsap and Toby Keith (the Career Achievement Award—though I think it’s a little early for Keith); the late music publisher Bob Beckham (the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award); Opry Entertainment Group president Steve Buchanan and Rascal Flatts (the Jim Reeves International Award, which is presented to an artist for “outstanding contributions to the acceptance of country music throughout the world”); William Morris agent Paul Moore (the Mae Boren Axton Award, which is given in recognition of “years of dedication and service by an outstanding individual to the Academy of Country Music”); and Carrie Underwood (the Gene Weed Special Achievement Award, which acknowledges “unprecedented, unique and outstanding individual achievement in country music”).

Jack Clement

This begs Question One: Can they come up with any more obscure awards to give to people, a) who have every other award in the books, or, b) who are industry people most of us have never heard of?

And Question Two: Wouldn’t we rather see most of these artists on the show instead of or in addition to, say, the Entertainer of the Year (“Presented by RAM”) nominees Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, George Strait (George Strait? How’d he get in here?) and Taylor Swift?

I have no further questions.

Jim Bessman