Music to their ears

Jeff Ayeroff, a longtime music executive and an academy member, said the resounding endorsement of the group reflected the fact that the academy represents “the artist community, which was very angry at what radio did, because it was not very American.” Ayeroff said he voted for the Dixie Chicks in at least one category.

At the awards on Sunday, the band — Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison — swept all five of the Grammy categories in which it was nominated, including the top three — Album, Record and Song of the Year — the first time all three have been swept in 13 years.

The awards amounted to vindication for the Dixie Chicks, who found their career sidetracked in 2003 after vocalist Maines told a London concert audience shortly before the invasion of Iraq that the band was “ashamed” that the President hailed from their home state, Texas. In the furor that followed, country radio programmers pulled the multiplatinum-selling trio’s music from the airwaves and rallied listeners to destroy their CDs.

The storm flared anew last year when the Dixie Chicks released the album Taking the Long Way, which included the single “Not Ready to Make Nice,” a defiant and bitter response to the group’s treatment. And things got worse when band members said they were not interested in being part of the commercial country music business; Maguire, who plays the fiddle, said the group would rather have fans “who get it” instead of “people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith.” Country stations once again all but ignored the Dixie Chicks’ music.

The sweep reflected something of a retort to the Country Music Association’s annual awards, held in November, where the Dixie Chicks were shut out. “When you go the CMAs, Alison Krauss doesn’t win Female Vocalist of the Year or Record of the Year, but she wins it at the Grammys,” Maines said backstage.