Willie Nelson Biography

Willie Nelson was born in 1933, in Texas, right in the middle of the Great Depression. His parents’ search for work brought him to Arkansas, but while still a young child, both his mother and father left Willie and his siblings with their grandparents to be raised. Willie Nelson’s grandparents had been music teachers, and so they began to teach Willie and his siblings, a fortuitous turn of events which would elicit young Willie’s yet untapped talents.

And so young Willie learned to play the guitar when he was six, and he and his sister began singing at the local church. By the time he was nine, he’d written his first song and played for Bohemian Polka, a local band. The citizens of the small Arkansas town always picked cotton during the summer, but Willie opted instead to earn his living by performing in taverns and honky tonks, all the way through his teens. He joined forces with the band The Texans while has in high school, and then after leaving school he joined the United States Air Force.

After nine months in the military, Willie snagged a job working at a local radio station, as a disc jockey. It was his first exposure to the music industry, and in 1956, he finally recorded his first single, “No Place for Me.” The single, completely financed by Willie himself, garnered him a bit more attention, and he started to perform at Independence Day picnics, a tradition he continued all the way into the rest of his career.

Red Headed Stranger, Willie’s debut album, was released and began to climb the charts. For the next four decades, Willie Nelson brought country music some of its most iconic hits, including “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” “On the Road Again,” “Always on My Mind,” and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” Nelson also launched a film career, appearing in a number of movies, including "Red Headed Stranger", "Thief", "Honeysuckle Rose", "Electric Horseman", and "Stagecoach.”

To date, Willie Nelson has earned nine CMA awards and six Grammy Awards, plus a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement and a Living Legend Grammy. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993.  He has recorded almost three hundred original songs and achieved platinum status on eleven albums, with two of them going double platinum. In addition to his commitment to music, Nelson is politically active in the liberal arena and a devoted supporter of a number of organizations, including those focused on environmental causes. He owns Willie Nelson Biodiesel, which is manufactured from vegetable oil, and he co-founded Farm Aid, which seeks to support America’s farmers and sustainable farming.