Just forty and she has won 27 Grammy Awards (with 41 nominations), making her the most awarded living recipient, only three behind classical conductor, Sir Georg Solti, the most honored artist ever.  She is already the most awarded singer…and the most awarded female artist…in Grammy history.

Alison Maria Krauss, born in 1971 in Decatur, Illinois and raised in nearby Champaign, began studying classical violin at age five because her mother was looking for interesting things for her to do. She soon switched to bluegrass and, at the age of eight, began to enter local talent contests.  At ten she had her own band.  At 13 she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship and was named “Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest” by the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America. She was also discovered to have “the voice of an angel.”

Signed by Rounder Records at the age of 14, she released her first solo album in 1987 and was then invited to join Union Station, the band with which she still performs.  As her contract with Rounder requires her to alternate between releasing solo albums and band albums, her first album with Union Station was released in 1989.

With fourteen albums and a plethora of soundtrack performances (including “O Brother, Where Art Thou”) she is roundly credited with helping to renew interest in bluegrass music.

Written by string-instrumentalist and vocalist Ron Black, today’s poignant selection (even for a Unitarian…and it’s the kind of selection in which Krauss excels) is the final track of Alison Krauss & Union Station’s (1997) seventh album, “So Long So Wrong”.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SONG – Sunday 4 March

A Reason For It All

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

It isn’t any wonder that I fall

Why do we suffer, crossing off the years?

There must be a reason for it all

I’ve trusted in you, Jesus to save me from my sin

Heaven is the place I call my home

But I keep on getting caught up in this world I’m living in

And your voice it sometimes fades before I know

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, crying with my need

Depending on your love to carry me

The love that shed His blood for all the world to see

This must be the reason for it all

 Hurtin’ brings my heart to you, a fortress in the storm

When what I wrap my heart around is gone

I give my heart so easily to the ruler of this world

When the one who loves me most will give me all

 In all the things that cause me pain you give me eyes to see

I do believe but help my unbelief

I’ve seen hard times and I’ve been told

There is a reason for it all