It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Willie Nelson breaches the rules of biography in his lengthy eulogy to his closest friend, Paul English, given that he has built a career out of defying expectations.
Co-stars Amy Irving and Dyan Cannon joined Nelson and his Family band for the album, which also featured Emmylou Harris, Hank Cochran, Jeannie Seely, and fiddler Johnny Gimble with songs like “Pick Up the Tempo” and “Heaven and Hell.”
The song that actually merits the title of “American classic,” despite the fact that “On the Road Again” became a worldwide classic, is “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”
What song did Willie Nelson write for Elvis Presley?
By releasing his 2016 tribute CD to the Gershwin brothers, Willie Nelson showed his admiration for the Great American Songbook. Nelson’s own work, though, deserves one or two volumes.
The Texas native is the songwriter of some of the most important songs in music, such as “Crazy,” which Patsy Cline popularized, and “Funny How Times Slips Away,” which Elvis Presley recorded.
Then there are the songs, which are linked to him because of his endearingly distinctive vocal style. You can’t hear a Willie Nelson performance without identifying it as such. Whether he was performing Countrypolitan songs in the 1960s—his 1962 first album.
