1961 proved to be a turning point in Willie's career. After moving to Nashville, he landed a music publishing contract with Pamper Records. That year, three songs penned by Nelson hit the charts; Faron Young's "Hello Walls," Billy Walker's "Funny How Time Slips Away" and Patsy Cline's now- legendary lament "Crazy" all hit the Top 40.

Throughout the 1960s, Willie recorded a series of minor country hits. In 1965 he signed a deal with RCA Records, was accepted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry and became deeply entrenched in the Nashville music scene. By the close of the decade, however, Willie was looking in a new direction. In an attempt to distance himself from what he felf was the formulaic country music coming out of Nashville at the time, Willie moved back to Austin to reinvent his sound. In 1973 he released Shotgun Willie on Atlantic Records, the first album of his new "outlaw country" image. Willie reached superstar status in 1975 when, after jumping from Atlantic to Columbia, he recorded the under-produced Red-Headed Stranger, which contained his first smash hit, a remake of Roy Acuff's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain."

In 1978 Willie teamed up with fellow country outlaw Waylon Jennings to record Waylon and Willie and the country anthem "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys." At the end of the '70s, Nelson made the jump to the big screen appearing in Robert Redford's The Electric Horseman and Honeysuckle Rose, for which he recorded his signature song "On the Road Again."

Throughout the '80s, Willie continued to push the limits of his music career and his personal life (as evidenced in his well-documented troubles with the I.R.S. during the late 1980s). In 1984 he threw a curve ball to his country fans by recording "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with Latino pop star Julio Iglesias.

In 1985 he banded with Kris Kristoferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash to record an album as the Highwaymen. That same year, along with Neil Young and John Mellencamp, Willie founded Farm Aid. During the past decade, the charity has raised more than $12 million dollars for a variety of rural American causes.

Willie, along with faithful companion Trigger, continues to record and tour at a frenetic pace.

Willie Nelson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993.