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Willie Nelson

WILLIE NELSON

YEAR

2023

INDUCTED BY

Dave Matthews

CATEGORY

Performers

Willie Nelson is an American institution – a songwriter, performer, anti-establishment outlaw, political activist, and a philanthropist. His songs tell stories of everyday people, and his personal actions support the welfare of American life.

Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Scott B. Bomar

“My heroes have always been cowboys,” Willie Nelson sang in 1980, and his nearly seven-decade career certainly exudes the independent self-assurance of that quintessential American archetype. He even has a trusty sidekick in Trigger, his well-worn guitar nearly as famous as he is. Though Newsweek declared him the “king of country music” in 1978, Willie Nelson is the kind of cowboy who gallops across the open range of every genre – country, blues, jazz, gospel, rock, pop, and beyond. He is an unmistakable stylist in the same category as Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, or Aretha Franklin.

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Class of 2023
Willie is an example of how the world could be if we could just straighten up and fly right.
Dave Matthews
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