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| WILLIE NELSON (b. Abbott, TX, April 30, 1933) has earned his reputation as an outlaw country singer, all recent tax problems aside, by breaking away from the dominant, slick "Nashville sound" to create the "Austin sound" with his warm, gravely voice and beat-up classical guitar. As a young man playing bass in the Ray Price band, he wrote "Night Life" for that band while Patsy Cline recorded his songs "Crazy" and "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Faron Young took "Hello Walls." Later, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby were also to cover Nelson's songs, but Nelson himself became a solo star with his 1975 breakthrough "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." Following that, Nelson went on to sell millions of records, winning five Grammys.
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