Once told little brother Willie, ‘You sing and I’ll play the piano’
DALLAS
Bobbie Nelson, whose prowess as a piano player powered the band of her younger brother, Willie Nelson, for more than half a century, died Thursday at her home in Austin. She was 91.
Willie’s publicist, Elaine Schock, issued a statement in which she said, “Her elegance, grace, beauty, and talent made this world a better place. She was the first member of Willie’s band, as his pianist and singer. Our hearts are broken, and she will be deeply missed. But we are so lucky to have had her in our lives.”
Bobbie gave literal luster to the band’s name – Willie Nelson and Family – as one of its founding members. Schock called her gifts as a keyboardist “a linchpin of his sound,” as she “sat at her piano just to the edge of the spotlight, a modest yet still powerful presence, stepping forward on occasion to lead the band and delight listeners with her wondrous pianistic gifts.”
Whether she pounded the keys on “Whiskey River” to open a Willie show or played softly on such exquisite ballads as “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” the long-haired lady on the keyboard has been a fixture at Willie shows the world over.
Austin music writer Michael Corcoran, who once wrote for The Dallas Morning News, honored Bobbie with a tribute on New Year’s Day, 2022, which happened to be her 91st birthday, in which he wrote: “The pair had forged an undeniable musical bond since she was six and Willie was four and their grandparents showed them the chords to ‘The Great Speckled Bird.’ “
Born in Abbott, Texas, as was her 88-year-old brother, Bobbie learned to play keyboards at age 5 on a pump organ, taught by her grandmother. After impressing the townsfolk at gospel conventions in nearby Hillsboro, her grandfather presented Bobbie with a cherished gift: Her first piano.
“My grandfather had said to me when I was learning to play the piano: You know, if you really work at this, you could earn your living playing music one day,” she once said. “And I never forgot that.”
By the time Willie and Bobbie were teenagers, Schock noted, they were playing honky-tonks with Bobbie’s husband Bud Fletcher and their guitarplaying father, Ira Nelson. But when Fletcher died in a car accident, a grieving Bobbie left music, at least temporarily, having suffered a nervous breakdown.
With three young boys to raise, she left for Fort Worth, to attend a business college in an effort to master secretarial skills for an office job. Before long, though, the Hammond Organ Co. hired her for both her office skills and her ability to demonstrate the company’s organs.
Soon, she was back to full-time piano playing, tickling the ivories in restaurants, lounges and supper clubs, elevating her status to “professional musician” in both Austin and Nashville, Tennessee.
But in 1973, her career went into overdrive. Signed by Atlantic Records, Willie invited her to join him in New York City for a recording session, which became the prelude to Bobbie being a member of Willie Nelson and Family for more than 50 years.
“So at age 42,” Corcoran wrote, “empty-nester Bobbie Nelson took her very first airplane flight and embarked on a glorious musical journey that is still en route. Willie and ‘Sister Bobbie,’ as she’s known in the extended Nelson family, have been musical partners since 1937 – during the Great Depression – “and continuously since ‘73.”
Corcoran noted that, in 2007, Willie offered the highest praise to his older sister – whom he always called “little sister” – and what she had meant for decades to his one-of-akind sound:
“There’s just no way to explain how lucky I am to have a good musician in the family. Whenever I’ve needed a piano player, she’s been right there. Whenever our band plays, Sister Bobbie is the best musician on the stage.”
But she was more than her brother’s backup. She released her own debut album, “Audiobiography,” in 2007, with Willie singing and playing guitar on two of the 12 tracks. Amazon noted that Bobbie had long been “the modest female counterpart” to her charismatic sibling, whose millions of fans all over the world have known for decades how Bobbie’s playing “melds into the ensemble that makes up Willie’s rough-hewn style, even as it also stands out in its assertiveness.”
The Nelson siblings also collaborated on a pair of books: the memoir “Me and Sister Bobbie: True Tales of the Family Band,” published in 2020 by Random House, and on the children’s book, “Sister, Brother, Family: An American Childhood in Music,” published in 2021 by Doubleday.
Bobbie Nelson has her own place in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 2017. But her legacy, of course, will be the role she played in helping make her redheaded brother a superstar.
“I’ve always been very shy,” Corcoran quoted her saying. “I sang a little when we were kids, mostly in church. But Willie had such a beautiful voice. I’d always tell him, ‘You sing, Willie, and I’ll play the piano.’ “
And in that regard, Bobbie Nelson was unparalleled.
As Willie wrote in the book, “Me and Sister Bobbie”:
“If I was the sky, Sister Bobbie was the earth. She grounded me. There is no longer or stronger or steadier relationship in my life.”