The morning after winning his first Grammy award, children’s entertainer Bill Harley, of Seekonk, celebrated in true rock-star style: Doing a show for second-graders in Utah.

“This is the glamour,” Harley said. “I said I want the [brown] M&Ms out or I’m not performing. And the kids aren’t allowed to have any candy while I’m eating it.”

Harley won the award last night for best Spoken Word Album for Children, for "Blah Blah Blah: Stories About Clams, Swamp Monsters, Pirates and Dogs.”

Last night? Actually, it was yesterday afternoon. Harley won the award in pre-televised ceremonies at about 2:30 in the afternoon in the Los Angeles Convention Center. His speech was short and sweet.

“I said I wanted to thank four people: my manager, Debbie Block; the president of my record label, Debbie Block; my friend, Debbie Block; and my wife, Debbie Block.”

He also thanked Dave Correia of Celebration Sounds, where the disc was recorded, and “acknowledged that I was one of a group of people who called themselves storytellers. And I wanted to thank the million kids I’ve seen over the past 25 years in schools and libraries and hospitals who have told me whether my work is any good almost immediately.”

Harley did get to sit in the Staples Center for the televised bash; he called the event bombastic but was more impressed by the performance of Chaka Khan at the after-party. “The silicone and the cleavage was incredible.”

This was Harley's third Grammy nomination. He lost to Elmo the first time around.

Block was with him for the award ceremony in Los Angeles, said Michele Eaton, the officer manager for Harley’s record label, Round River Records.

“We’re very excited,” she said early this morning. “I can only speak for me. Bill is in California.”

Eaton said the majority of the Grammy awards are given out at that pre-show.

Harley was one of many children’s recording artists whose work was recognized for a Grammy for the Best Musical Album for Children, “cELLAbration! A Tribute to Ella Jenkins,” but Eaton said that doesn’t really count as Harley winning a Grammy since the album and not the individual artists won for that album in 2004.

His other two works that were nominated were “Weezie and the Moonpies” in 1998 and “The Battle of the Mad Scientists and Other Tales of Survival” in 1999, Eaton said.

Harley has been performing since the mid-1980s.

Back in a Journal interview in 2004, Harley spoke about losing to Sesame Street’s Elmo that first time he was nominated for a Grammy. He wasn’t quite dismissive about the two nominations, but pretty close.

"I was doing a lot of NPR stuff at the time, so I think I had some more cachet back then. The thing about the Grammys is, it's just a beauty contest when you get down to it. Who listens to everything? . . . I lost to Elmo the first year.

"It'd be nice if it happened, but at this point I'm more interested in doing good work."

Reminded today that he had once called the Grammys "just a beauty contest," Harley laughed and said, “It is, but it’s really good to win a beauty contest.”

In a July 2005 Journal story about Governor's Bay Day, a one-day-free pass to Rhode Island state beaches and parks, Journal staff writer Katherine Imbrie invited a number of notable Rhode Islanders to name their favorite beach and tell the paper why they like it so much.

Harley and his wife, Debbie Block, love the wide-open spaces of Horseneck State Beach, just over the state line in Westport, Mass. They love it so much, in fact, that Harley wrote a poem celebrating the beach following a 1990 visit there with his sons Noah and Dylan, who were then young boys. (They are now 23 and 19.)

On Horseneck in October

You stood in silhouette against the running sea,

Two boys down on the beach. I called to you,

''Take off your shoes, and roll your pants up high."

And watched as you went wading in the tide.

The words you spoke were lost beneath the sound

Of tumbling water going in and out again;

Only shrieks and laughs had strength to rise above

The hiss and crash of waves -- they were enough.

''Your pants are soaked!" I yelled, but still you danced,

Two spirits standing out before the sea.

And so I leaned back in the sand and watched

The playing of this simple melody.

It called out and I sang along; I heard

The joy more than when the song was mine.

Oh sweet sons, on what beach, years from now,

Will you hear it, watching children in the tide?

Harley has an adult concert scheduled for next Saturday, where he’ll sing songs and tell stories from an adult perspective. He’s playing at 8 p.m. at The Vanilla Bean Café in Pomfret, Conn. He’ll be playing with fellow musicians Keith Munslow and Marty Ballou.

Last Friday, he was in Utah performing in the winter version of a very popular summer storytelling festival, Eaton said.