The Babe Ruth of Bluegrass--and the Grammys.

• Author: Colville, Joe
• Position: ENTERTAINMENT

ALISON KRAUSS waits for Union Station singer Dan Tyminski to kick off "Man of Constant Sorrow." Tyminski, though, begins playing the theme from "Hawaii Five-O" on his guitar. He suddenly is simultaneously irresponsible, vain, unreliable, and untrustworthy. He looks at Krauss and says, "I like that song." Then he breaks into "Man of Constant Sorrow" with his searing tenor.

Singer and fiddle player Krauss runs a tight ship as band leader and she knows it. She realizes members of Union Station would like to liven up their show. "Probably they would like to spice things up... but it's spicy enough for me. Life is spicy enough," she tells disc jockey Eddie Stubbs in October 2015 at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn.

Bob Jones is the technical producer of a bluegrass festival in Newport, R.I. It is 1985. Jones calls up Ken Irwin, one of the founders of Rounder Records. Jones tells Irwin about a singer from Illinois and Irwin tells Jones about a fiddle player from Illinois.

Alison Maria Krauss, 14 years old, is that singer and that fiddle player. Born and raised in the Land of Lincoln, Krauss is not a child prodigy like Wolfgang Mozart, who started playing the piano at the age of four. Krauss does not start playing the violin until she is five. Her mother not only listens to the squeaky noise, but encourages her daughter--something the daughter has remembered to this day. The youngster hates practicing, but loves to compete in fiddle contests. Radio talk show host Dennis Prager writes, "Excellence is almost impossible without competition."

Krauss takes up bluegrass music. Author Thomas Goldsmith takes 43 words to define it in The Bluegrass Reader. Krauss says, "It's acoustic 'rock 'n' roll.'"

Similar to other bluegrass music legends--Bill Monroe on mandolin and Earl Scruggs on banjo--Krauss is too loud and showy on her instrument as a youngster. Nelson Mandrall, who tutors her, tells his student, "You're not listening to what anyone else is playing." Her precociousness has led her to become overbearing on the fiddle. She begins to eschew hot licks "in favor of a more restrained, melodic style," writes Scott Alarik in The Boston Globe. Ever since the reprimand, her playing is characterized by more restraint than flash.

The teenager joins a band and makes it her own. Union Station with Alison Krauss soon becomes Alison Krauss with Union Station and now we often see only the initials AKUS. No matter, we all know it is her show.

In the...