Willie Nelson turns 91 on May 29 and, as is fitting for an artist who exudes joy and mischief, he’s still recording and performing. Words like “icon” and “legend” are overused in contemporary Western society but they can be applied to Willie without embarrassment – suitably ancient in appearance while youthful in both zest and personality, he is unique: both his fecund creativity and characteristic wisdom and warmth. His appeal crosses generations-races-nations – indeed, for many people who don’t listen to country music he’s the one artist they take a shine to. Willie casts a spell and, once enchanted, why turn away?
I’ve listened to Willie ever since he broke big with Stardust in 1978 (as a school boy I purchased the 45 of Blue Skies and revelled in its tender melancholy – it was possibly the only record I owned as a 14 year old that my parents liked) and, while I prefer some of his recordings to others, I do think he is a consummate artist, one who continues to engage and intrigue me. In this sense, have a very happy birthday, Willie!
Whenever I’m asked about musicians I would most like to interview, my answer always is Willie + Buddy Guy – Buddy’s 87 (88 in July) and, at present, undertaking his “farewell” tour of the US, while Willie (amazingly) seems content to keep on performing. Admittedly, Nelson’s music is gentler and less intense than Guy’s (who, at his best in the 1960s, recorded blues sessions that rank amongst the fiercest ever) but still, taking to the stage night after night, the soundchecks and travel, surely it must be exhausting? I’m sure it is but Willie obviously loves what he does, takes pleasure in sharing his music with the public, and keeps doing interesting, engaging collaborations – someone, perhaps one of his wives, once suggested that “Willie will probably die out there on that ole tour bus” and this may well be the way he’d like to go: cowboy boots on, guitar in hand, a song in his heart and a last hit of smooth Hawaiian weed in his lungs.
Irving Berlin’s 1926 composition has been recorded by many artists but I think Willie’s version might be definitive. By the by, the cover of Stardust is a painting by Susanna Clark (artist, songwriter and wife of Guy Clark).
Willie had a majestic 2023 – he celebrated turning 90 with two nights of star-studded concerts at the Hollywood Bowl (filmed for DVD and released on CD as Long Story Short: Willie Nelson 90) while a five-part documentary entitled Willie Nelson and Family was released on streaming services to excellent reviews (I watched and it was both engaging and informative – while honouring Willie it never slipped into hagiography). Willie was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: even if he’s always been rooted in country music, Willie is definitely an honorary rocker.
For 2024 he won headlines and kudos when he re-recorded Ned Sublette’s wonderful ode to gay range riders Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other with Orville Peck, the masked, gay Canadian country singer (who sang this witty, insightful song with Willie at the Hollywood Bowl). I doubt this tune got a lot of radio play in the US but it was Willie, once again, putting himself in the firing line for haters who love to hate.
Willie & Orville: what a gem this is!
He also has two spots on Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter as host of Smoke Hour, a fictitious radio station. I’d hoped for a duet – Willie has recorded more duets than any other artist in history – but Cowboy Carter is more about marketing than music so just having Willie (and Dolly) as country’s elder superstars doing spots is obviously all that was considered necessary to increase Bey’s brand reach. He’s got an album of new material dropping at the end of May and its first single (and title track) The Border is superb.
Written by Rodney Crowell and originally featuring on his 2019 Texas album, Willie does a superb interpretation of a song told from a border guard’s perspective.
Last year, to honour Willie’s 90th, I convinced The Guardian to let me pay tribute via the listing they have every week of an artist’s Top 10 films/songs. With Willie hitting 90 and having near 70 years of creativity behind him I managed to get it stretched to Top 30. I’ll list them below with added commentary. All are on streaming services so I hope you enjoy seeking out a few of his myriad efforts. Or just listen to Stardust, one of those wonderfully timeless albums that I never tire of.
1. CRAZY (1961) – During one week in 1958, despondent about his career and marriage, Nelson wrote Night Life, Funny How Time Slips Away and Crazy, three songs that would become standards. Crazy (initially titled Stupid) demonstrates his innate grasp of a great country song. It’s short, melodic and heartrending, a self-flagellating portrait of a breakup that the protagonist knows they should have seen coming. When he first offered it to other stars, Nelson struggled for interest – Nashville musicians disliked the complex minor chords and jazz-influenced phrasing – until a reluctant Patsy Cline (her husband had to convince Patsy she should record Crazy) turned Nelson’s stately demo into an era-defining hit. Nelson’s first version, from his 1962 debut album, is even slower, a timeless moody blues that conveys heartbreak’s hurt like few other songs.
2. GEORGIA ON MY MIND (1978) – When Booker T. Jones produced Stardust, an album of Nelson singing a selection of standards from the 1930s, Columbia Records’ suits were aghast – Willie had recently won a wide audience via being marketed alongside Waylon Jennings as part of “the Outlaws” – Westerns still did big business at the US box office and these long haired, bearded country singers fitted the public’s image of a Hollywood “outlaw” – and Columbia wanted more Outlaw-themed product, not jazzy standards. Initially Columbia only pressed up a limited number of albums but so beautiful was Stardust radio stations began playing it and the album went on to win Nelson international stardom. Here he sings Hoagy Carmichael’s ballad with such keen, understated grace it established him as one of popular music’s great interpretive singers.
3. NIGHT LIFE (1960) - Nelson’s label rejected the blues flavoured Night Life as “not country”, forcing Willie to record it under the alias “Paul Buskirk and the Little Men featuring Hugh Nelson”. Ray Price made it a hit in 1963 and everyone from Doris Day through Aretha Franklin to B.B. King (my favourite - on his 1967 live in Chicago LP) has sung those immortal lines "The night life ain't no good life, but it's my life."
BB’s version is so great I have to share it!
4. BLUE EYES CRYING IN THE RAIN (1975) – Fred Rose’s 1946 ballad had been recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Gene Vincent before Nelson cut the definitive version. Aching and sparse, its the centrepiece of Red Headed Stranger, a concept album about a killer on the run, and gave Willie his first US Country No 1.
5. HIGHWAYMAN (1985) – Jimmy Webb’s mythic ode to reincarnation provided not just the name for a country supergroup consisting of Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings, but gave the quartet a massive, Grammy-winning hit. Willie sings the first verse as a mythic outlaw “hung in the spring of ‘45 but still alive”. He indeed is still alive, this most Zen of singers and songwriters.
6. FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY (1961) – Nelson’s bittersweet ballad about encountering a former partner who slipped away is one of his most covered songs – everyone from Elvis and Al Green to Bryan Ferry and Tina Turner have sung it. Willie’s often recorded Funny: as he’s been married four times its possible he relates closely to it.
7. COWBOYS ARE FREQUENTLY, SECRETLY FOND OF EACH OTHER (2005) – Nelson first demoed Ned Sublette’s ode to gay cowboys in the mid-80s, finally releasing it (“I kept it in the closet,” joked Willie) after Brokeback Mountain’s success (he approached the film’s producers as to it featuring in the film but, oddly, was turned down). A warm, insightful song addressing small town mores, it won Willie plaudits – he has long been country music’s most progressive voice – and brickbats.
8. ME AND PAUL (1971) - Nelson’s homage to Paul English (Willie’s drummer from 1955 until his death in 2020) is a witty, proto-rockabilly bro-mance about mishaps they endured whilst touring. English also served as Willie’s enforcer. “If you’re writing songs about shooting people,” noted English, “it’s nice to have a guy who’s shot people up there onstage with you.”
9. MAMMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS (1978) – Willie and Waylon were seen as the Butch & Sundance of “Outlaw” country. The opening track (and biggest hit) of the first (and best) of their three duet albums, is a joyous decrying of the Outlaws wayward lifestyle with a gentle waltz rhythm. Reggie Young’s electric guitar fires things up nicely.
10. ROLL ME UP AND SMOKE ME WHEN I DIE (2012) – Nelson’s joined here by old pal Kris Kristofferson and new pal Snoop Dogg, the trio joyously sharing a wry philosophy on what to do with their ashes. Willie released the song on green vinyl for Record Store Day and named his 2012 memoir after this irreverent celebration of getting blunted.
Here’s Willie with Snoop at his 90th birthday concert.
11. HELLO WALLS (1961) – Faron Young’s version of Nelson’s song of existential dread – a jilted lover addresses the walls, window and ceiling of his room as if a prisoner locked in torment – gave Faron a career defining hit. Nelson’s since recorded Hello Walls many times, including as a duet with Young in 1985.
12. MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS (1980) – Robert Redford cast Nelson in The Electric Horseman, his first acting job, and Willie delivered an engaging turn as the wise cracking Wendell. This peach of a ballad became the film’s theme song, appropriately addressing themes of ageing and faded dreams: Nelson was a youthful 47 when he sang it. In TEH Willie ad-libbed this memorable line: “I'm gonna get me a bottle of tequila and find me one of them Keno girls that can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch and just kinda kick back.”
13. WILLINGLY (1961) – This duet with Shirley Collie, soon-to-be Nelson’s second wife, is a country torch song consisting of little more than aching voices and double bass. Willingly gave Willie his first Country Top Ten hit yet he would have to wait until 1975’s Red Headed Stranger album established him as a bestselling artist.
14. SHOTGUN WILLIE (1973) – With Arif Mardin producing and the Memphis Horns blasting, Nelson’s Atlantic Records debut’s title tune is a raucous celebration of Nelson not as lover or thinker but wild hell raiser – he’d picked up the nickname “Shotgun Willie” after he had recently shot it out with an abusive son-in-law. Kris Kristofferson referred to Shotgun Willie as “mind farts” while Nelson later declared it “more clearing my throat.”
15. PANCHO AND LEFTY (1982) – Nelson’s prodigious output has seen him record duet albums with many of his contemporaries, Bakersfield’s Merle Haggard – a real outlaw, having served time in San Quentin – being a favoured partner. Townes Van Zandt’s ode to weary bandits suited these grizzled singers’ personas and gave Willie and Merle a huge US hit. The video features Townes playing guitar in a cantina – a nice acknowledgement.
A great song sung by two of country music’s finest singers - what’s not to like?
16. BLUE SKIES (1978) – Columbia’s executives feared Stardust would be rejected by fans who wanted “outlaw” Willie. Instead, they loved his interpretations of songs from his childhood. Backed by a small combo, Nelson sings the Irving Berlin standard with a wistfulness few before or since have matched. One of his finest vocal performances. Booker T. Jones – yes, of “the M.G.s” – arranged and produced Stardust (he and Willie found themselves neighbours in Malibu and enjoyed one another’s company) and what a wonderful job he did.
17. A GOOD HEARTED WOMAN (1976) – Nelson and Waylon Jennings wrote this rousing celebration of their long suffering wives in 1969, recording it individually. Remixed as a duet for The Outlaws, a compilation RCA threw together that quickly sold over one million copies, Good Hearted Woman hit big and helped Willie and Waylon become American icons.
18. BLOODY MARY MORNING (1974) – Disillusioned by Nashville and his lack of success, Nelson briefly left music in 1971 to raise hogs. Returning, he continued to struggle until Phases And Stages, a concept album reflecting on a couple’s divorce, produced this, a jaunty, bluegrass-flavoured boogie and his first significant hit of the 1970s.
19. IMMIGRANT EYES (2019) – Across the decades Nelson’s recorded several songs by his fellow Texan songwriters and “outlaw” country poets, Billy Joe Shaver and Guy Clark, neither of whom ever enjoyed his mainstream success. This sublime interpretation of Clark’s homage to ancestors who crossed from Europe to Ellis Island is intimate and deeply felt.
20. WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE (2018) – Nelson’s My Way album finds him singing Sinatra’s hits – Frank being the singer who most influenced his vocal style. Here, teamed with regular duet partner Norah Jones, the Texans’ cook up a joyous country-jazz boogie. Willie loves to sing duets – so much so he claims to hold the Guinness record for such.
Willie’s jazzy phrasing used to drive country music’s gatekeepers crazy - here he and Norah work so well together as they sing a late night jazz bar standard.
21. GOD’S PROBLEM CHILD (2017) – Tony Joe White, Leon Russell and Jamey Johnson join Nelson on this atmospheric slice of Southern rock. Having left Nashville for Austin, Texas, in 1972, Willie’s interpretations of Russell’s A Song For You and Gregg Allman’s Midnight Rider demonstrate the shared country and blues roots he and the rockers shared.
22. SEVEN SPANISH ANGELS (1984) – Nelson had long been in awe of Ray Charles and when producer Billy Sherrill paired them to sing this dramatic, mariachi-flavoured, gunfighter ballad both men rose to the occasion and delivered exceptional vocal performances. A huge hit in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, this is a stunning recording.
23. TOO SICK TO PRAY (1996) – If the 1980s found Nelson dominating the charts (don’t mention that Julio Iglesias duet…), the ‘90s were for musical adventures. Spirit is a striking album featuring this classic on ageing and mortality. His exquisite acoustic guitar picking (on his battered Trigger) reinforces just how gifted a musician Willie is. I hope that, one day, Nelson records the Alabama 3 song of the same name.
24. THE HARDER THEY COME (2005) – Countryman, Nelson’s long gestating reggae-country album (Island Records’ founder Chris Blackwell initially paired him with Sly & Robbie – thinking they all smoke weed and Jamaicans’ love country music - to no results), was generally regarded a failure. Yet Willie works wonders here, transforming Jimmy Cliff’s Jamaican anthem into a stark, sharp outlaw country song powered by snapping guitar and fierce, foreboding percussion.
25. ACROSS THE BORDERLINE (1993) – Nelson’s Don Was-produced album of the same name found him surrounded by famous fans and, inevitably, its uneven. Yet Willie sang the title track, a haunting lament – written by Ry Cooder, John Hiatt and Jim Dickinson for Freddy Fender to sing on the soundtrack of a dull Jack Nicholson film – about migrants crossing from Mexico to Texas with such grace it’s now a contemporary standard.
Here’s Freddy Fender’s version - this really is a superb recording in every sense (not a superfluous note or word). Freddy’s largely forgotten today so let’s honour his memory.
26. ON THE ROAD AGAIN (1980) – Honeysuckle Rose gave Nelson his first starring role in a feature film (playing a struggling country singer having an affair – typecasting? Hmmm) but its this song Willie wrote for the film’s soundtrack – which encapsulates his desire to live life on a tour bus – rather than the film that fans remember.
27. I AM THE FOREST (1983) – Recovering from collapsed lungs, Nelson wrote the songs for Tougher Than Leather, his first album of original material in eight years. His band – which featured his older sister Bobbie Nelson on piano until her passing in 2022 - provide beautiful accompaniment on a song that captures Willie’s Texan Zen spirit.
28. ALWAYS ON MY MIND (1982) – A decade after Elvis scored with this bathetic ballad, Nelson took uber-producer Chips Moman’s advice and recorded it. Willie’s weathered baritone conveyed a heartache listeners related to and he scored the biggest country hit single and album (of the same name) of 1982 while scooping several Grammy and CMA awards.
29. BRING ME SUNSHINE (1968) – Originally recorded by The Mills Brothers and best known here as Morecambe & Wise’s theme song, Nelson’s version finds him in fine voice and gave him his last hit of his Nashville era. When he returned to the charts in the mid-1970s Austin’s thriving counterculture had transformed Willie’s look and sound.
30. I DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT LOVE (2023) – Nelson’s 2023 album finds him focusing on the songs of Nashville’s premiere songwriter, Harlan Howard, and this, its title track, is perfect Willie: wry, reflective and beautifully sung. At 91 Willie Nelson continues to record and tour – it might be a while before his ashes are being rolled between the Rizlas.
I imagine Willie knows plenty about love - he’s certainly one of the great singers on the murmuring heart.
Obviously, choosing 30 songs by an artist who has literally recorded hundreds and hundreds of songs is a crazy task and here I attempted to demonstrate Nelson’s range across his long career. Someone could easily compile a completely different list and it would still demonstrate what a great artist Nelson is. Or a list of 30 songs that he wrote – he has four new originals on his forthcoming The Border album which, I’m sure, will demonstrate that, as a songwriter, he continues to engage with the human heart – writing with sensitivity and insight is just one of the many remarkable things about Nelson. Or 30 of his finest duets. Or 30 of his finest songs from each decade he has been recording or… with Willie there are multitudes!
If you have any favourite Willie songs or stories do please share them with me – the man’s a legend and deserves to be celebrated while he still walks the earth. I’ll finish with a live recording of Willie and Ray, two of the US’s greatest song stylists -
Thank you for honoring Willie! What a legend. Like Dolly P, there isn't anything anyone can say to put these authentic, down home folks down. That's the gift of embracing your roots rather than running from what's just plain good, soulful stock.
I ain't got much to add to your beautiful tribute except that WANTED! THE OUTLAWS was a great singalong album for my rural five-year old heart. Waylon and Willie - what a pair. "Good Hearted Woman" will always reverberate through my outlaw heart.
https://open.spotify.com/track/51Rkq3d0SXupKaFnpWA9nf?si=8147abe80221476b