Leisure
Temple Daily Telegram’s
Sunday Magazine
March 27, 1988
Music superstar Willie Nelson will present a concert at 8 p.m. today at the Bell County Expo Center in Belton.
Tickets for the concert cost $13.50 for reserved seats and $10.00 for general admission.
During a career which has spanned four decades, Nelson has carved a reputation of being a musical outlaw, a renegade determined to do things his way rather than conform to accepted standards of the music industry.
Born in Abbot, north of Waco, nelson was influenced musically at an early age by his gospel-singing grandparents, who raised him and his older sister, Bobbie Lee.
Nelson’s grandparents learned music through mail-order courses and taught him and Bobbie to play instruments.
Also, Nelson was obsessed with the radio, listening to the Grand Ole Opry, Jazz from new Orleans, blues from stations scattered around the South, Big Band singers and western swing, especially the music of Bob Wills.
Nelson joined his first group, John Raycjeck’s Bohemian Polk Band, at age 10. He later worked as a disc jockey between stints selling Bibles, encyclopedias and other items door to door.
His frist recording was “No Place for Me.” In 1956, which Nelson financed himself and sold to his radio listeners in Vancouver, Washington. In the late 1950s, Nelson moved to Houston, where he wrote some of his early hits, including “Night Life” and “Family Bible.
With the money he made — $200 — for selling “Night Life” and “Family Bible,” Nelson moved to Nashville in 1960 and began to work as a songwriter. Patsy Cline hit No. 1 with Nelson’s ‘Crazy’ in 1961, followed by Faron Young’s version of ‘Hello Walls’ which also hit No. 1.
Nelson hit the top 10 with two duets — ‘Willingly’ and ‘Touch Me’ — with his second wife, Shirley Collie, in 1962. He made his debut on the Grand ole Opry in November 1964.
But Nelson never felt comfortable recording in Nashville, recording songs the way record company executives forced him to, so in 1970, after his home burned down, he returned to Austin.
There he recorded his first breakthrough album, ‘Shotgun Willie,’ in 1973. In 1975 Nelson scored his major breakthrough with the album ‘Red-Headed Stranger,’ which contained the hit ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.’
A concept album which was recent made into a movie, ‘Red-Headed Stranger’ utilized simple instrumentation and spare production which ran against Nashville’s thinking at the time.
The album’s success, along with ‘Wanted: the Outlaws’ featuring Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter, earned Nelson his outlaw image.
Nelson has been challenging traditional music views in many different ways throughout his life.
In the past several years, Nelson has recorded many albums and songs with different singers, such as Leon Russell, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Julio Iglesias.
In 1985 he released ‘The Highwayman,’ recorded with Jennings, Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.
While most recording stars release only one album every year or two, Nelson often release two, three even four albums a year.
Since 1978, with the release of his ‘Stardust’ album, Nelson has broadened his musical horizons past country and rock music, recording pop music standards from before 1950.
Nelson has performed in Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and Canada as well as Las Vegas, the White House and countless roadside honky tonks here in the U.S.
Nelson also has appeared in several motion pictures, including ‘Electric Horseman,’ ‘Thief,’ ‘Honeysuckle Rose,’ ‘Barbarosa,’ ‘Songwriter’ and ‘Red-Headed Stranger.