Vince Gill photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Vince Gill is one of the most talented and respected artists in country music — and on Sept. 9 the Recording Academy showed him by making Vince the first artist to be honored at their inaugural “Grammy Salute to Country Music.”

Alison Krauss, Brad Paisley, Amy Grant and many others paid tribute to Vince by performing his songs. The Tennessean reported that Alison sang Vince’s “These Days,” while Brad did “Tryin’ To Get Over You” and “Oklahoma Borderline.”

Brad told Dial-Global that he was 11 when he first met Vince at a Steve Wariner concert.

“[Vince] was the opening act with a new song called ‘Turn Me Loose,’ which had great guitar playing, and it had a great melody, and I remember thinking, ‘This is the kind of guy that I want to be like,’” he says. “And our friendship continued after that. I got to know him five years later or so when I became a teenager and got to meet him at a few more shows. [I] dearly love him. He’s fantastic. I say was, but he is Mr. Country Music. For all of the ’90s ? it’s like, so you wanna know what country music is? Well, go pick up his album. Any one of them. Listen to it. That’s him on the guitar, that him singing it, he wrote it. That’s what we’re capable of. And that’s really who he is.”

Vince was honored to be selected by the Recording Academy, but in his typical humbleness, he told The Tennessean he wasn’t sure that they picked the right honoree.

“I thought that Alison (Krauss) would have been a better choice,” he told reporters before the ceremony Wednesday night at the Loveless Barn in Nashville. “She’s won more Grammys than I have,” he added. “I’ve won a lot, but she’s won a lot more. But she’s a kid, so there’s plenty of time for her.”

Also tipping their hats to Vince were his wife, Amy Grant, his daughter, Jenny Gill, and actor/comedian/musician, Steve Martin.

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