The Soggy Bottom Boys
Who would have guessed that O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the 2000 film directed by Joel and Ethan Cohen, would spawn a bluegrass revival? The Depression-era comedy, with its twangy soundtrack and old-timey classics, earned a Grammy in 2001 for Album of the Year, and helped popularize singers like Dan Tyminski, who provided the vocals for the Soggy Bottom Boys' frontman — an otherwise talentless nobody named George Clooney. The jailbird trio's hit song, Man of Constant Sorrow, went on to garner several awards, including a Grammy for best Country Collaboration with Vocals and the Country Music Assocation's award for best single of the year. "We like to call this a phenomaly — a phenomenon and an anomaly," one Nashville music executive said of the track's mass appeal. The song's popularity prompted a roadshow of sorts, taking the group all the way to Carnegie Hall. Not bad for a fake band covering a song first published in 1913 by a blind Kentucky fiddler named Dick Burnett.