The Willie Thread

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"It was just so amazing to us that I could play one part and Willie could play another and together we had a song. We'd look at each other and our eyes would light up. Playing music made us realize that there was something bigger out there, something more than human life."

 

---- Bobbie Nelson talks about how she and her brother Willie learned to play music in Abbott, Texas, back in the 1930s, as quoted by Michael Corcoran in his great book "All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music," 2017. Super interesting book. Highly recommended.
 

Shown here: Bobbie and Willie a few years later. Photographer unknown.




 

[Temple Belton Killeen]

Say what you want to about Willie --- and I know that some people don't like him because of his politics, my dad being one ---- I read that Farm Aid has given away more than 150 million dollars to family farmers.  There is at least one in Refugio that I know personally who would have lost his farm if it wasn't for Willie. 

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Willie on The Midnight Special, 1975, when his voice was probably the strongest it has ever been. Who remembers watching the Midnight Special? It ran for nine years. Wolfman Jack was the announcer. Some great artists appeared.

 

 

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"About ten years ago, I lost my home, my car, and everything in the big flood in Nashville. The Opry was flooded too, so really, I lost two homes, and I ended up being all over the news. The Associated Press came down and talked to me, and so did some TV reporters. They showed my beautiful Martin guitar, just destroyed, on top of a pile of stuff.

One of the first calls I got was from Willie. He said, 'Well, I saw on the news that the flood floated your mailbox away. So where do I send my check?'”

----- country music singer Jeannie Seely, whose hit "Don't Touch Me" won a Grammy in 1967, recalls how Willie Nelson reached out to help her after Nashville was devastated by a flood in 2010, as reported by John Spong in Texas Monthly's Willie edition a few years ago