Willie Nelson

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Willie Nelson has run a long hard race in Country music but has won through as a premier stylist. Born in Abbott, Texas, on April 30 1933, Nelson was raised by his grandparents after his own parents separated His grandparents taught him some chords & by his teens he was becoming proficient on the guitar. In 1950, he left Abbott to join the Air Force and on his subsequent discharge he married a Cherokee Indian girl by whom he had a daughter, Lana. Living in Waco, Texas, Nelson took various salesman jobs, but anxious to gain a proper intro into music he talked his way into an announcing job at a local station. Soon after he was hosting Country shows on a Fort Worth station, doubling at night as a musician in some rough local honkey tonks and, whenever he could, he was jotting down songs. It was during this period that he wrote Family Bible and Night Life, songs which have become standards. When he finally made his way to Nashville and found a job in Ray Price's band as a bass player, he found that he was placing his songs at last. Price, a huge name of that era, made Night Life his theme tune. Faron Young cut Hello Walls, Patsy Cline Crazy and Willie himself recorded The Party's Over. They were somber but haunting melodies, true 'white man's blues' and Willie has since incorporated them tellingly into his sparse, bluesy act. More than 70 artists have recorded Night Life (Willies songs are often potential cross-overs but the artist himself presents them usually in a different tone). After poaching most of Ray Price's band from him, Nelson went on the road. At this time his first marriage broke up and he went off with the wife of a DJ Association president and married again, settling variously in Fort Worth, Los Angeles & Nashville. Besides recording 18 albums in these years he also helped the career of Charley Pride, featuring him on his show in the deepest south during the racially sensitive years of civil rights. Home | Next