Interesting info on country music icon Willie Nelson

High school football photo.

Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas on April 29, 1933, during the Great Depression, making him currently 82.  Nelson's ancestry includes English, Irish, and Cherokee.

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.  During the summer, the family picked cotton along with other citizens of Abbott.  Nelson disliked picking cotton, so he earned money by singing in dance halls, taverns, and honky tonks from age 13, and continuing through high school.

Fresh faced yute.

Nelson has married four times and fathered seven children.

The first marriage to Martha Matthews was marked by violence, with Matthews assaulting Nelson several times,  including one incident when she sewed him up in a bed sheet and then beat him with a broomstick.

Nelson's next marriage was to Shirley Collie in 1963. The couple divorced in 1971, after Collie found a bill from the maternity ward of a Houston hospital charged to Nelson and soon to be third wife Connie Koepke for the birth of Paula Carlene Nelson.

During the 1980s, Nelson started to train on tae kwon do, in which he holds a second-degree black belt.  During the 1990s, Nelson started to practice the Korean martial art GongKwon Yusul.  In 2014, after twenty years on the discipline, his Grand Master Sam Um presented him with a fifth-degree black belt on a ceremony held in Austin, Texas.

Currently, Nelson lives in Maui, Hawaii, in a largely self-sustaining community where all the homes use only solar power. Neighbors include Kris Kristofferson, Woody Harrelson, and Owen Wilson.  He also owns a ranch near Austin, Texas where he spends half his time.