Life by Keith Richards

Frank Sinatra was his favorite singer and like Old Blue Eyes, the Red-Headed Stranger wanted to make his mark on the American songbook.

Back home in Texas with his sister, Bobbie, he’d been thinking about the songs he heard on the radio as a boy growing up in Abbott. There are many stories of Willie Nelson’s fierce artistic independence floating around the world and this is one of my favorites: After a string of successful albums, including “Red-Headed Stranger” (1975), “The Troublemaker” (1976) and “Waylon and Willie” (1977), Willie’s label at the time (Columbia Records) was very interested in more outlaw country.

“Townes wrote it,” he said of "Pancho and Lefty." Then he and Strait unwound the epic tale of wayward hustlers, Strait’s voice golden and strong and Willie’s rising, falling and catching like the dusty dry wind that rustles the scrubby brush along the Texas border - reminding listeners that his tone is the perfect vehicle for capturing the poetry of the American West.įor subscribers: Willie's country: 'The patron saint of Austin' reshaped a genre and the Texas capital 2. As the applause died down, Willie teased the crowd, saying there was a song he “always wanted to do.”