And Then I Wrote

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Nelson would team up with Jennings again soon after to record the popular single "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," which won the 1978 Grammy Award for best country vocal performance by a duo or group. In 1952, Nelson married for the first time, to Martha Matthews, with whom he had three children — Lana, Susie and Billy — before they split up a decade later. He followed by marrying singer Shirley Collie in 1963 and then Connie Koepke in 1971, with whom he had daughters Paula and Amy.

Nelson took the fire as a sign that things needed to change. Returning to his native Texas with family in tow, he settled in Austin and soon became an important part of the city’s country music scene, performing regularly at its many venues. However, despite these successes, Nelson’s own recordings fell on deaf ears during this period. He did not fit the traditional Nashville country music mold, and whenever producers tried to make him fit they only succeeded in stripping away the qualities that helped make him unique, such as his unusual manner of phrasing. And Then I Wrote's title reflects the fact that Nelson was a hit songwriter long before he was a solo star. And as a showcase of songwriting talent, the album is both an unheralded country classic and an excellent precursor to more expansive and well-known Nelson releases like Red Headed Stranger. These songs are stark expressions of heartbreak. “If you can't say you love me, say you hate me,” Nelson sings on “Undo the Right”, desperate to feel something. “Three Days” is darkly comic: “Three days I hate to be alive: today, yesterday and tomorrow.” “The Part Where I Cry” and “Where My House Lives” are brilliantly coded expressions of grief. In the former, Nelson describes his life as a movie (or “picture”) and sells it to the listener-turned-viewer (“I was great in the part where she found someone new”). “Where My House Lives” is a heartbreaking closer: “Here's where my house lives… I never go there / ‘Cause it holds too many memories” Nelson tells the listener, removing himself from the picture of domestic happiness and accepting the role of lonesome cowboy-drifter that would come to define his future.

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Nelson has a strong compassion for animals, and over the years he has been involved with various animal-welfare groups, including the Society for Protective Animal Legislation, Best Friends Animal Society and the Animal Welfare Institute. With the latter, Nelson has become deeply involved in a campaign to save horses from slaughter. His group Willie and the Nelson Family, which features his sister, Billie, recorded the song “Wild Horses” to benefit the cause. IRS and Legal Troubles Nelson also continued to collaborate with a range of recording artists. In 2008, he performed live in Amsterdam with rap icon Snoop Dogg, and the duo went on to work together on the video for "My Medicine." In 2009, Nelson teamed up with music group Asleep at the Wheel to release the country swing album Willie and the Wheel, and that same year he released Naked Willie, which included new mixes of his early recordings. In 2010, Nelson released the critically acclaimed Country Music, a collaboration with producer T Bone Burnett. Nelson starred as the titular role of the Red Headed Stranger, the 1986 western drama film based on his 1975 album of the same name. He would later go on to appear in films such as The Dukes of Hazzard (2005), Blonde Ambition (2007), Beer for My Horses (2008) and Zoolander 2 (2016). "Always on My Mind" and "To All the Girls I've Loved Before"

Red Headed Stranger: Charts & Awards (Billboard Singles)". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation . Retrieved June 12, 2011. According to one of his autobiographies, Nelson wrote many songs while still living in Texas. Among these is “Crazy”, which became a big hit for superstar Patsy Cline, helping to jumpstart Willie’s career. I knew the Cline version before I knew that Nelson wrote it, and there are marked differences in delivery between the two recordings. Patsy Cline's is melodic and whimsical, while Nelson's near-spoken-word vocal in his version reveals more personal pain. He actually sounds kind of crazy, or at least hurt and lost. It’s incredible. Though the 1962 single “Touch Me” did reach the country Top 10, Nelson’s debut album, And Then I Wrote, failed to chart, as did his follow-up album, Here’s Willie Nelson. It seemed his efforts as a performing artist would fail to bring the success that others enjoyed from recording his songs. Return to Texas

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In 2008, Nelson released Moment of Forever, which garnered much critical praise. He also scored a Grammy that same year for the single "Lost Highway," a duet performed with Ray Price, whose recording of “Night Life” nearly a half-century before had been one of Nelson’s earliest successes. Collaborations: Snoop Dogg, Merle Haggard, Sheryl Crow and More

Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. In 1991, Nelson was dealt a devastating blow when his 33-year-old son Billy died on Christmas Day in what Nelson describes as “a terrible accident” in It’s a Long Story. Rarely discussing his children’s lives publicly, Nelson writes he believes “the children of entertainers – especially the children of wandering troubadours – pay a big price. Sharing your dad with the world isn’t fun. And when that dad has moved through three tumultuous marriages and is on his fourth – well, that’s no picnic. I regret the pain that my lifestyle has caused my kids.”Erlewine, Michael (1997). All Music Guide to Country: The Experts' Guide to the Best Recordings in Country Music. Miller Freeman. ISBN 978-0-87930-475-1. I've decided to make a real effort at listening to every Willie Nelson album before he inevitably passes (and trust me, it hurts my heart to think about the day he's laid to rest), which is going to be quite the undertaking... Texas Monthly ran an article ranking every release of his and they claimed a round 150. If I listen to two studio albums of his every day I'll finish... around mid to late August. This'll be fun. A few years later, he started playing his first professional gigs with a local polka band. A job at odds with his Christian upbringing. “I was ten, a member in good standing of the Methodist Church and a devoted grandson,” Nelson writes. “At the same time, when I was invited to play music in a beer joint, I said to hell with all the objections raised by the bible-thumpers.” Adding to his resume of successful collaborations, the following year Nelson joined with Johnny Cash, Jennings and Kristofferson to form the country supergroup the Highwaymen. “You wouldn’t think that our four uneven voices would blend. But they did. They fit together like a jigsaw puzzle,” Nelson writes of the group in It’s a Long Story.

Nelson and Connie divorced in 1988 and he married D'Angelo in 1991. They have two sons, Lucas and Jacob Micah, and live in a sustainable solar-powered community in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. “It’s love that brought Annie and me together, and it’s love that, nearly 30 years later, has kept us together,” Nelson wrote in 2015 of his fourth marriage. “When it comes to romantic relationships, that’s a record for me. Took me damn near a lifetime to get it right.” A&E Concert Special In 1947 Nelson joined the gospel group Bud Fletcher and the Texans, which already featured Bobbie on piano. He continued to attend school and lettered in numerous sports. The band played the local club circuit for the next few years and Bobbie and Bud Fletcher married. It was during this time Nelson first appeared on local radio. Air Force As a child, Nelson’s love of the farming life was cemented as he raised calves and hogs, and helped tend the vegetables alongside his beloved grandparents. “Even though I didn’t use fancy words like ‘horticulturalist’ or ‘breeder,’ I was developing skills at farming,” he writes of the time. “Not only because of my grandparents’ instructions but because I was a member in good standing of the Future Farmers of America, a proud organization that was strong in the rural cities of Depression-time America.” Fueled by the success of his songwriting, he was signed by Liberty Records. During August, Nelson started recording his first album, produced by Joe Allison. The single releases of the album " Touch Me" and " The Part Where I Cry" were recorded on that day in Nashville, Tennessee, while it was completed during September in the recording facilities of the label in Los Angeles, California. The single "Touch Me" became Nelson's second top ten, reaching number 7 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles.After receiving the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress in 2015, Nelson released Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin (2016), a tribute to the iconic songs of George and Ira Gershwin and featuring duets with artists such as Crow and Cyndi Lauper.