Willie Nelson - Early Life

Early Life

Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas, during the Great Depression, on April 30, 1933, to Myrle Marie (née Greenhaw) and Ira Doyle Nelson. Nelson's ancestry includes English, Irish, and Cherokee. His parents moved from Arkansas in 1929, to look for work. Nelson's grandfather, William, worked as a blacksmith, while his father worked as a mechanic. His mother left soon after he was born, and his father remarried and also moved away, leaving Willie and his sister Bobbie to be raised by their grandparents. The Nelsons, who taught singing back in Arkansas, started their grandchildren in music. Nelson's grandfather bought him a guitar when he was six, and taught him a few chords, and with his sister Bobbie, he sang gospel songs in the local church. He wrote his first song at age seven, and when he was nine, played guitar for the local band Bohemian Polka. During the summer, the family picked cotton along with other citizens of Abbott. Nelson didn't like picking cotton, so he earned money by singing in dance halls, taverns, and honky tonks from age thirteen, and continuing through high school. Nelson's musical influences were Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Django Reinhardt, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong .

Nelson attended Abbott High School where he was a halfback on the school football team, and also played basketball as a guard, and shortstop in baseball. He also raised pigs for the Future Farmers of America organization. While still at school he sang and played guitar in The Texans, a band formed by his sister's husband, Bud Fletcher. After leaving school in 1950 he joined the United States Air Force for eight to nine months, then worked as a disc jockey at local radio stations. He had short stints with KHBR in Hillsboro, Texas, and later with KBOP in Pleasanton, Texas. In 1952, he married Martha Matthews, and from 1954 to 1956 studied agriculture at Baylor University. Nelson joined the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, but dropped out to pursue a future in music. Meanwhile, he held jobs as a tree-trimmer, saddle-maker, as well as selling door-to-door bibles, vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias.