BIOGRAPHY: WILLIE NELSON
OUTLAW LEGEND
Willie Nelson’s talents as a singer and songwriter have reached into almost every corner of country music for almost 60 years. During the 1970s, he and Waylon Jennings were considered the most important figures in the Outlaw movement.
Born into the Great Depression on April 30, 1933, in tiny Abbott, Texas, he was raised by his paternal grandparents. He started writing poems at age five. His grandfather gave him a guitar at age seven, and he soon started writing songs.
In his twenties, Nelson scraped by as a radio disc jockey and door-to-door salesman while trying The Outlaws, a collection of songs that became the to break into the Texas music scene. After his first country album to be certified platinum, with songwriting began to attract attention, he moved more than one million in sales. The album featured to Nashville in 1960, and he was hired for $50 a Nelson-Jennings duets, launching them as one of week as a songwriter while he struggled to launch country’s most famous duos. a recording career. Like Jennings, Nelson moved away from the Outlaw But even as he wrote hit after hit for other artists, image by the end of 1970s, but he continued to Nelson’s bluesy singing clashed with pop-country blaze his own path. In 1978, he released an album styles of the 1960s. After his home burned down that featured pop standards, which went on to in 1970, he moved back to Texas, hoping to build multi-platinum success. By the 1980s, he was acting a regional performing career. Instead, musical in movies, and he joined Jennings, Johnny Cash, tastes changed, and he was among the group of and Kris Kristofferson in the country “supergroup,” artists known as Outlaws who attracted a national the Highwaymen. following. Nelson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Nelson’s blend of traditional country, blues, and Fame in 1993, and he has continued to release new Southern rock helped define Outlaw country. music into his eighties. Long after most artists have The way he looked went along with his music: He retired from the road, Nelson also has continued to grew a beard, tied a bandanna around his head, keep touring. and let his hair get long and eventually turn into “What do you want me to quit?” he asks. “I just play his trademark pigtails. music and a little golf, and I don’t want to give up In 1976, he joined Waylon Jennings, Jennings’s either one of those.” wife, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser on Wanted!
SOURCES LISTEN CBS News; “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” The Encyclopedia of Country “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (written by Fred Rose in 1945, Music; Rolling Stone; Willie: first recorded by Roy Acuff, Hank Sr.) An Autobiography by Willie “Blue Skies” Nelson; Willie Nelson: The “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” Outlaw by Graeme Thomson (with Waylon Jennings), “Me and Paul”, “On the Road Again”