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Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album

award for best contemporary Blues album

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ3492779 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album was awarded from 1988 to 2011 and from 2017 onwards. Until 1992 the award was known as Best Contemporary Blues Performance and in 1989 was awarded to a song rather than to an album.

The award was discontinued after the 2011 Grammy season in a major overhaul of Grammy categories. From 2012 onwards, the category was merged with the Best Traditional Blues Album category to form the new Best Blues Album category. However, in 2016 the Grammy organisation decided to revert the situation back to the pre-2012 era, with two separate categories for traditional and contemporary blues recordings respectively.

Years reflect the year in which the Grammy Awards were handed out, for music released in the previous year. Buddy Guy and Keb' Mo hold the record of most wins in the category with four each, followed by Robert Cray, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Taj Mahal and Fantastic Negrito, all with three wins.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album” as award for best contemporary Blues album. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1988, 2011, 2017, 1992—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1988. The account is most persuasive where Grammy, Award and Best can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as award for best contemporary Blues album. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3492779. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 2011, 2017 and 1992.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album primary sources, Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album archive and Grammy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.