1. WILLIE NELSON

Nelson’s iconography sometimes obscures just how important a musician he is. His battlescarred guitar comes to mind, a striking visual that can make you forget he’s one of the great instrumentalists in popular music. The pigtails, bandana and lined face — a cowboy-hippie hybrid — is so familiar that you can lose sight of Nelson’s standing as one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. All of it — the words, the instrumental chops, that aching reedy voice and his fascinating sense of time — contribute to the creation of the most iconic persona in Texas music history. Nelson will always be identified with country music. But his is a broader American music, using country only as a point of departure for a sound that travels through jazz, soul, R&B, rock, pop, big band. He’s both brilliant balladeer and also a pre-punk rocker who plotted his own peculiar way through the music industry. Had he just written songs like “Crazy” and “Night Life” in the ’60s, he’d be a legend. Had he only recalibrated country music with narrative concept albums and rootsy standards collections in the ’70s, he’d be a legend. You could create a Mount Rushmore with just Nelson representing the various phases and stages of his career. But his music has been perpetually on the road again and doesn’t lend itself to being set in stone. As he sang, “Still is still moving to me.” Most Texas musical moment: Nelson’s entire career speaks to an independent Texas spirit. If you had to name one moment, his 1971 return to the Lone Star State from Nashville changed everything for him and, in turn, for those who came to love his music