Alison Krauss & Robert Plant "Raising Sand" (Rounder) were last nights big winner at the 51st annual Grammy® Awards.

Although bluegrass fiddler and angelic vocalist Allison Krauss, with her duo partner Robert Plant, stole the show at Sunday night’s 51st annual Grammy awards show in Los Angeles, other bluegrass figures also emerged with hardware in hand.

The Krauss/Plant combo won in all five categories where they and their highly lauded CD, Raising Sand (Rounder), were nominated, including Record of the Year for “Please Read the Letter” and overall Album of the Year. This makes Rounder only the second independent label in Grammy^® history to win in these two categories.

Bluegrass band leader Ricky Skaggs of Kentucky Thunder walked a well-worn path to the stage to pick up his fifth Grammy^® for Best Bluegrass Album. This time, the award singled out Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass: Tribute to 1946 and 1947 (Skaggs Family Records), a Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder salute to perhaps the greatest version and certainly the most genre-changing version of Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys. That 1940s era marked the addition of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs to the Bluegrass Boys lineup. The sound of bluegrass, and certainly bluegrass banjo ala Scruggs-style, were changed forever by that band.

CMT.com quotes Skaggs talking about the pioneering band members when he received his award: “This album is about them, about them fathering a whole generation of bluegrass like myself and others. I want to thank them for their effort. Earl Scruggs is here tonight. If you get a chance, go by and shake his hand, because he is the only surviving member of those five men, and he deserves honor tonight.”

The trip to the Grammy^® stage is indeed a familiar one for Skaggs. Depending on what Web source you rely on, this was either his 13th or 14th Grammy award.

Also picking up a Grammy^® was banjo player Bela Fleck and his band, The Flecktones, who won the best pop instrumental album Grammy^® for their Christmas CD, Jingle All The Way (Rounder). Flecktone bassist Roy “Future Man” Wooten accepted the award for the group.

According to one published source, Fleck has won Grammys^® in more categories than any other recording artist.