Long way home

THE DIXIE CHICKS are now officially an L.A. band.

The trio started in Texas and soared to fame in Nashville but, after their well-documented odyssey through partisan politics, they were frozen out of the country music establishment, which denied them radio airplay and awards. The Grammys stepped in Thursday to embrace the genre refugees in dramatic fashion, giving them five nominations, including for album, record and song of the year for the music of “Taking the Long Way,” a CD recorded in Los Angeles with rock musicians and a rock sensibility.

Two British newcomers joined the Chicks with three nominations in the four marquee categories for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, which will be handed out Feb. 11 at Staples Center. James Blunt, who scored one of the year’s ubiquitous hits with his cracking, falsetto performance on “You’re Beautiful,” was nominated for best new artist, as was Corinne Bailey Rae, the smoky, soulful singer of the hit “Put Your Records On.” Each also was nominated for record (which recognizes performance and production) and song of the year (a songwriting award).

The biggest surprise of the day may have been the no-show by Bob Dylan’s “Modern Times” in the best album category. The CD earned almost reverential reviews from many critics and was already being sized up by many industry insiders as one of the favorites to win the category. Dylan has only one best-album trophy, the one he picked up for the 1997 collection “Time Out of Mind.”

The new artist category included three musicians from the other side of the Atlantic: Rae, Blunt and 28-year-old singer-songwriter Imogen Heap, whose nomination was a surprise for a year in which industry insiders said there was a wide field of fresh faces to choose from.

Rae was at the nomination announcement event Thursday in Santa Monica, as were Blunt and KT Tunstall, another young U.K. singer-songwriter who earned a nomination in the female pop vocal category for her performance on “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.”

“I see Jamie and KT all the time,” Rae said. “We all kind of came out at the same time. As new English people, we think, ‘How did we get here?’ ”

The new artist category was rounded out by Chris Brown, the young R&B; sensation whose style recalls Michael Jackson’s, and Carrie Underwood, the “American Idol” winner whose album “Some Hearts” was the year’s bestselling CD by a woman at 2.3 million copies to date. Its big hit was “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” which earned a song of the year nomination for writers Brett James, Hillary Lindsey and Gordie Sampson.

No one heard their name read Thursday more often than Mary J. Blige, often called the queen of hip-hop soul. Blige earned eight nominations, five in R&B; categories, making her the dominant figure in that genre’s fields. Her album, “The Breakthrough,” has sold 1.7 million copies since its release late last year and yielded the sentimental track “Be Without You,” nominated for record and song of the year.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Los Angeles band that has endured for more than two decades in the face of personal tragedies and often dismissive critics, crowned a triumphant year with six nominations, including album of the year for “Stadium Arcadium.” The sprawling two-disc set not only won over many critics, it earned the funk-rock veterans their first No. 1 entry on the U.S. pop charts.

CDs from the Chicks and Peppers will contend for album of the year with “Continuum” by singer-songwriter John Mayer (who won the 2004 song of the year Grammy for “Daughters”); “FutureSex/LoveSounds,” by Justin Timberlake, whose critical acclaim in 2006 has cemented his transition from youth-pop star to mature solo artist and now picks up his second nomination in the category (with “Justified,” 2002); and “St. Elsewhere,” by Gnarls Barkley, the duo that weaves the soulful vocals of Cee-Lo with the hip-hop alchemy of the DJ known as Danger Mouse.

Gnarls Barkley joins the Gorillaz (which earned five 2005 Grammy nominations) as envelope-pushing hybrids of hip-hop, rock and soul; the hit “Crazy” is nominated in the prestigious record of the year category, along with the songs by Rae, Blunt, Blige and “Not Ready to Make Nice,” the defiant Dixie Chicks song written directly in response to detractors. “Not Ready to Make Nice” also secured a song of the year nomination for its writers, the Chicks and collaborator Dan Wilson.

The Chicks, of course, have been in the center of one of pop’s strangest soap operas. On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, lead singer Natalie Maines was on stage in England and made an off-the-cuff remark that would rival John Lennon’s 1966 quote about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus” as a cultural flashpoint. Maines told the crowd: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

The Chicks became the target of CD burnings, radio bans and peer criticism that changed the course of their career and even led to this year’s acclaimed documentary film, “Shut Up & Sing.” Maines and her partners, sisters Emily Robison and Martie Maguire, responded this year with an album that, musically, is their least beholden to traditional country or bluegrass.

The group has a long history of Grammy attention -- it has five trophies already and this is its third nomination for best album -- but this year the accolades stand in stark contrast to the Country Music Assn. awards in November, which ignored the Chicks despite the album’s sales, which now stand at 1.7 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Sales matter to the Grammys, certainly. Three of the best-album nominees are among the year’s Top 10 bestselling titles, and Mayer’s “Continuum” is the only one not to have cracked the million-copy threshold in the U.S.; with 927,000 copies, it should break that barrier in short order thanks to the public awareness boost the Grammy nominations typically provide.

But commercial success alone doesn’t assure the affections of the 11,000 or so voting members in the Recording Academy. The bestselling album of the year is the soundtrack to “High School Musical,” the Disney Channel sensation, with 3.4 million copies sold, and No. 2 on the sales tally is “Me and My Gang” by country trio Rascal Flatts; the former was shut out as far as nominations and the latter was a surprise omission in the country album category.

geoff.boucher@latimes.com