Willie Nelson, who is up for two Grammys at this year’s awards, has not won the most awards from the Recording Academy. That honor goes to Beyonce, who has received more than twice as many as the red-headed stranger. He doesn’t have the most nominations. I mean, 57 noms seems like a pretty impressive number to me, but ten other artists have earned at least 70.
So, sure, there are others who have received even greater recognition from the most famous of all American music associations. But consider this:
Nelson got his first Grammy nomination in 1975, for a duet with Tracy Nelson called “After the Fire is Gone.” That means those 57 noms have come over an extraordinary span of 51 years. He has been nominated in 20 distinct Grammy categories.
Some of them may overlap or be the result of renaming or consolidation, but still, think of the breadth of music you have to create to receive nominations in 20 different categories.
Willie Nelson won his first Grammy fifty years ago
Nelson, who will turn 93 in April, did not take home a statue for that Nelson duet. But he did win a prize the following year.
His first Grammy came in 1976. The category was Best Male Country Vocal Performance. The song was “Blues Eyes Crying in the Rain.” A classic romantic lament written by Fred Rose in 1947 and initially made famous by early country legend Roy Acuff.
Nelson included it on his revolutionary concept album Red Headed Stranger in 1975. The album was not recognized by the Academy, but the song was. Recorded with his “family” band, it is simple and hauntingly beautiful.
Nelson, who had been kicking around as a Nashville songwriter and then Texas iconoclast for 20 years by that point, was 42 years old and about to become a superstar.
He won the Male Country Vocal prize a couple more times over the next decade and then, about 40 years later, took home two more in the consolidated Best Country Solo Performance category. That was the category in which he won his latest award – this year’s results still pending. It was in 2023, when he celebrated his 90th birthday with a song aptly titled “Live Forever.”
In all, Willie Nelson has been nominated for country solo performances 15 times and won five Grammys. And he may be even better known for his wide-ranging list of collaborations.
That category has morphed over the years, so it is difficult to pinpoint an exact number, but it would be fair to say that Nelson has received 16 nominations for country collaborations and has won three prizes.
His first win was with fellow outlaw Waylon Jennings for “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” in 1979. He was nominated with Jennings several more times (somehow, their transcendent “Pancho and Lefty” failed to win in 1984), as well as with the Highwaymen, Asleep at the Wheel, Toby Keith, and Julio Iglesias, among others.
In all, Willie Nelson has won 12 Grammys for specific recordings and two other special awards … the Legends Award in 1990 (in the first cohort of “Legend” honorees) and then the Lifetime Achievement Award ten years later in 2000.
That adds up to 14 total Grammys spread across nine distinct categories, with two more currently pending.
He has won for Country Album and Country Song. He has also won two for Traditional Pop Album, and been nominated in Blues, Bluegrass, Inspirational, and Music Video categories.
This year, at 93, Willie Nelson – a man who used to sell the rights to megahit songs for a few dollars to support his young family – is nominated in two different categories, for two different albums.
Last Leaf on the Tree is up for Best Americana Album, while Oh What a Beautiful World is nominated as Best Traditional Country Album. Wikipedia claims they are his 76th and 77th studio albums, and I'll have to trust that. I can’t count that high. I just know that Willie’s son Lukas is nominated in the same category, as is Zach Top, who took his first breaths when Willie Nelson was 64 years old.