Willie Nelson

"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.