Artist: Willie Nelson Genre(s):
Country
Rock: Pop-Rock
Reggae
Blues
Pop
Vocal
Discography:
Last of the Breed Year: 2007
Tracks: 22
The Platinum Collection (cd3) Year: 2006
Tracks: 16
The Platinum Collection (cd2) Year: 2006
Tracks: 20
The Platinum Collection (cd1) Year: 2006
Tracks: 20
Songbird Year: 2006
Tracks: 11
Countryman Year: 2005
Tracks: 12
It Always Will Be Year: 2004
Tracks: 13
Willie Nelson and Friends: Live and Kickin' Year: 2003
Tracks: 15
The Essential Willie Nelson (cd2) Year: 2003
Tracks: 19
The Essential Willie Nelson (cd1) Year: 2003
Tracks: 22
The Great Divide Year: 2002
Tracks: 1
Revolutions Of Time: Journey 1975-93 (CD 3) Year: 2001
Tracks: 20
Revolutions Of Time: Journey 1975-93 (CD 2) Year: 2001
Tracks: 20
Revolutions Of Time: Journey 1975-93 (CD 1) Year: 2001
Tracks: 20
Milk Cow Blues Year: 2000
Tracks: 15
The Very Best of Willie Nelson Year: 1999
Tracks: 24
One for the road Year: 1999
Tracks: 20
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd8) Year: 1998
Tracks: 15
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd7) Year: 1998
Tracks: 27
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd6) Year: 1998
Tracks: 28
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd5) Year: 1998
Tracks: 28
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd4) Year: 1998
Tracks: 28
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd3) Year: 1998
Tracks: 29
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd2) Year: 1998
Tracks: 32
Nashville Was The Roughest (cd1) Year: 1998
Tracks: 30
16 Biggest Hits Year: 1998
Tracks: 16
Country Love Songs Year: 1997
Tracks: 20
Across The Borderline Year: 1993
Tracks: 14
Shotgun Willie Year: 1990
Tracks: 12
Stardust Year: 1978
Tracks: 1
Teatro Full album Year:
Tracks: 14
Red Headed Stranger Year:
Tracks: 1
Live from austintx Year:
Tracks: 1
As a songwriter and a performing artist, Willie Nelson played a life-sustaining role in post-rock & roll country music. Although he didn't become a star until the mid-'70s, Nelson spent the '60s authorship songs that became hits for stars like Ray Price ("Night Life"), Patsy Cline ("Crazy"), Faron Young ("Hullo Walls"), and Billy Walker ("Funny How Time Slips Away") as well as releasing a series of records on Liberty and RCA that earned him a minuscule, only devoted, cult following. During the early '70s, Willie aligned himself with Waylon Jennings and the burgeoning illicit res publica movement that made him into a star in 1975. Following the crossover success of that year's
The Red Headed Stranger and "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," Nelson was a real star, as recognizable in start circles as he was to the country hearing; in addition to recording, he too launched an acting life history in the early '80s. Even when he was a star, Willie ne'er played it good musically. Instead, he borrowed from a wide diversity of styles, including traditional start, Western swing, jazz, traditional country, cowboy songs, honkey tonk, rock & undulate, folk music, and the blue devils, creating a distinctive, rubber band hybrid. Nelson remained at the spinning top of the res publica charts until the mid-'80s, when his life-style -- which had always been shut to the outlaw clichés with which his music flirted -- began to spiral out of control, culminating in an infamous fight with the IRS in the late '80s. During the '90s, Nelson's gross sales never reached the heights that he had experienced a x earlier, only he remained a vital ikon in land music, having greatly influenced the new nation, young diehard, and alternative rural area movements of the '80s and '90s as well as leaving behind a legacy of classic songs and recordings.
Horatio Nelson began performing medicine as a child growing up in Abbott, TX. After his padre died and his female parent ran aside, Nelson and his sister Bobbie were elevated by their grandparents, wHO encouraged both children to play instruments. Willie picked up the guitar, and by the time he was seven, he was already writing songs. Bobbie learned to toy pianissimo, finally meeting -- and afterwards marrying -- twiddler Bud Fletcher, world Health Organization invited both of the siblings to get together his band. Nelson had already played with Raychecks' Polka Band, merely with Fletcher, he acted as the group's frontman. Willie stayed with Fletcher passim high school. Upon his commencement, he coupled the Air Force merely had to bequeath shortly afterward, when he became plagued by back problems. Following his disenrollment from the servicing, he began looking for for full-time work. After he worked several parttime jobs, he landed a job as a rural area DJ at Fort Worth's KCNC in 1954. Nelson continued to sing in honky tonks as he worked as a DJ, decision making to make a twinge at recording life history by 1956. That year, he headed to Vancouver, WA, where he recorded Leon Payne's "Lumberjack." At that sentence, Payne was a DJ and he blocked "Lumber jacket" on the melodic line, which eventually resulted in sales of 3,000 -- a respectable figure for an self-governing unmarried, only not enough to arrive at much attention. For the following few old age, Willie continued to DJ and spill the beans in clubs. During this sentence, he sold "Crime syndicate Bible" to a guitar instructor for 50 dollars, and when the vocal became a hit for Claude Gray in 1960, Nelson distinct to move to Nashville the following year to stress his fortune. Though his nasal bone voice and jazzy, off-centered verbiage didn't make headway him many friends -- several demos were made and then spurned by assorted labels -- his songwriting ability didn't go unnoticed, and shortly Hank Cochran helped Willie estate a publishing contract at Pamper Music. Ray Price, world Health Organization co-owned Pamper Music, recorded Nelson's "Night Life" and invited him to connect his touring band, the Cherokee Cowboys, as a bassist.
Arriving at the commencement of 1961, Price's invitation began a landmark year for Nelson. Not only did he play with Price -- finally taking members of the Cherokee Cowboys to kind his own touring band -- just his songs as well provided major hits for several other artists. Faron Young took "Hello Walls" to number one for ennead weeks, Billy Walker made "Funny How Time Slips Away" into a Top 40 area dash, and Patsy Cline made "Softheaded" into a Top Ten pop crossing hit. Earlier in the year, he sign-language a contract with Liberty Records and began cathartic a series of singles that were unremarkably drenched in in string section. "Willingly," a couple with his then-wife Shirley Collie, became a Top Ten hit for Nelson early in 1962, and it was followed by some other Top Ten individual, "Allude Me," after that year. Both singles made it seem like Nelson was primed to suit a star, just his life history stalled merely as quickly as it had taken off, and he was soon charting in the lower regions of the Top 40. Liberty closed its country division in 1964, the same year Roy Orbison had a hit with "Pretty Paper."
When the Monument recordings failed to become hits, Nelson moved to RCA Records in 1965, the same year he became a fellow member of the Grand Ole Opry. Over the following seven old age, Willie had a unbendable stream of minor hits, highlighted by the number 13 off "Institute Me Sunshine" in 1969. Toward the conclusion of his stint with RCA, he had grown foiled with the label, which had continually time-tested to shoehorn him into the intemperately produced Nashville sound. By 1972, he wasn't even able-bodied to make the country Top 40. Discouraged by his want of success, Nelson decided to pull away from land music, moving support to Austin, TX, later on a brief and disastrous sojourn into slovenly person husbandry. Once he arrived in Austin, Nelson completed that many loretta Young rock fans were hearing to body politic music along with the traditional whitey tonk hearing. Spotting an chance, Willie began playing once more, scrapping his pop-oriented Nashville sound and image for a careen and folk-influenced redneck outlaw paradigm. Soon, he earned a contract with Atlantic Records.
Scattergun Willie (1973), Nelson's first-class honours degree album for Atlantic, was evidence of the transfer of his musical style, and although it ab initio didn't sell well, it earned well reviews and genteel a dedicated cult next. By the flow of 1973, his rendering of Bob Wills' "Delay All Night (Delay a Little Longer)" had cracked the land Top 40. The undermentioned year, he delivered the conception album
Phases and Stages, which increased his following regular more with the gain singles "Bloody Mary Morning" and "Later on the Fire Is Gone." But the real commercial breakthrough didn't get until 1975, when he cut off ties with Atlantic and signed to Columbia Records, which gave him complete creative control of his records. Willie's first-class honours degree album for Columbia,
The Red Headed Stranger, was a spare conception record album about a sermoniser, featuring entirely his guitar and his sister's forte-piano. The mark was loth to release with such barren arrangements, merely they relented and it became a vast hit, thanks to Nelson's unpretentious cover of Roy Acuff's "Blueish Eyes Crying in the Rain."
Undermentioned the breakthrough success of
The Red Headed Stranger as well as Waylon Jennings' coincident success, outlaw country -- so named because it worked outside of the confines of the Nashville manufacture -- became a sensation, and RCA compiled the various-artists record album
Treasured: The Outlaws!, victimization material Nelson, Jennings, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter had antecedently recorded for the label. The digest boasted a number unrivaled unmarried in the form of the freshly recorded Jennings and Nelson duo "Honorable Hearted Woman," which was as well named the Country Music Association's single of the year. For the side by side phoebe age, Nelson consistently charted on both the land and pop charts, with "Remember Me," "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time," and "Uncloudy Day" seemly Top Ten land singles in 1976; "I Love You a Thousand Ways" and the Mary Kay Place duo "Something to Brag About" were Top Ten land singles the undermentioned twelvemonth.
Nelson enjoyed his to the highest degree successful yr to engagement in 1978, as he charted with two very unalike albums.
Waylon and Willie, his first-class honours degree duo record album with Jennings, was a major success early in the twelvemonth, spawning the signature vocal "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys." Later in the yr, he released
Stardust, a string-augmented aggregation of pop standards produced by Booker T. Jones. Most observers believed that the unconventional album would derail Nelson's vocation, just it out of the blue became one of the most successful records in his catalog, disbursal almost ten geezerhood in the country charts and eventually marketing over four zillion copies. After the success of
Stardust, Willie forficate out into picture show, appearing in the Robert Redford flick
The Electric Horseman in 1979 and stellar in
Honeysuckle Rose the following class. The latter spawned the hit "On the Road Again," which became another one of Nelson's key signature songs.
Willie continued to have hits throughout the early '80s, when he had a major crossover winner in 1982 with a cover of Elvis Presley's strike "Always on My Mind." The individual exhausted deuce weeks at phone number one and crossed over to number fivesome on the pop charts, sending the album of the same name to number deuce on the pop charts as good as quadruple-platinum status. Over the future deuce years, he had bump off twosome albums with Merle Haggard (1983's
Poncho & Lefty) and Jennings (1982's
WWII and 1983's
Fill It to the Limit), spell "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," a duet with Latin pop star Julio Iglesias, became another major crossover success in 1984, peaking at number five on the pop charts and number matchless on the country singles chart.
Next a string of number one singles in early 1985, including "Road agent," the first single from the Highwaymen, a supergroup he formed with Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson, Nelson's popularity gradually began to fret. A new genesis of artists had captured the aid of the area audience, which began to drastically cut into his have hearing. For the remnant of the ten, he recorded less oft and remained on the road; he as well continued to do jacob's ladder work, most notably Farm Aid, an annual concert that he founded in 1985 designed to provide help to seedy farmers. While he career was declining, an old devil began to weirdo up on Willie: the IRS. In November 1990, he was minded a bill for $16.7 trillion in back taxes. During the following class, virtually all of his assets -- including several houses, studios, farms, and diverse properties -- were taken away, and to help pay his bill, he released the double album
The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories? Originally released as deuce discriminate albums, the records were marketed through boob tube commercials, and all the winnings were directed to the IRS. By 1993 -- the class he off 60 -- his debts had been nonrecreational off, and he relaunched his recording life history with
Across the Borderline, an ambitious album produced by Don Was and featuring cameos by Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, Sinéad O'Connor, David Crosby, and Kris Kristofferson. The criminal record received stiff reviews and became his kickoff solo album to appear in the pop charts since 1985.
Subsequently the loss of
Crossways the Borderline, Nelson continued to exploit steadily, cathartic at least one and only album a year and touring constantly. In 1993, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, only by that time, he had already become a living legend for all country music fans crossways the world. Signing to Island for 1996's
Heart, he resurfaced deuce years later with the critically acclaimed
Teatro, produced by Daniel Lanois. Nelson followed up that success with the instrumental-oriented
Night and Day a class by and by;
Me and the Drummer and
Milk Cow Blues followed in 2000.
The Rainbow Connection, which featured an eclectic natural selection of old-time country favorites, appeared in saltation 2001.
Astonishingly fertile as a recording artist, Nelson released
The Great Divide on Universal in 2002. A assembling of his early-'60s publication demos for Pamper Music called
Crazy: The Demo Sessions came out on Sugar Hill in 2003. Later in 2003 Nelson released
Run away That by Me One More Time, which reunited him with Ray Price and kicked off a relationship with Lost Highway Records.
It Always Will Be and
Outlaws and Angels both appeared on Lost Highway in 2004, followed by the release of Nelson's long-delayed endeavor at a country-reggae fusion,
Countryman, also on Lost Highway, in 2005.
You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker arrived the following yr, along with
Songster, Nelson's coaction with alt-country singer/songwriter Ryan Adams and his lot the Cardinals. The double-disc
Last of the Breed, an ambitious project that paired Nelson with Merle Haggard, Ray Price, and Asleep at the Wheel, was released by Lost Highway in 2007.
