Willie Nelson Trivia
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This Willie Nelson trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and follows the whole story: the Abbott, Texas kid raised by his grandparents who wrote his first song at seven, the Nashville songwriter behind Crazy and Hello Walls, the outlaw who moved to Austin and turned in Red Headed Stranger to executives who thought it was a demo, and the icon who co-founded Farm Aid, joined The Highwaymen and paid off a $32 million tax bill with an album. You'll get questions on his battered Martin guitar Trigger, the film that produced On the Road Again, the pop-standards album that sat on the country chart for ten years, his duet partners, his biodiesel and cannabis businesses, and the Halls of Fame he belongs to. Difficulty runs from easy fan questions to ones that only serious Willie people will get. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which small Texas town was Willie Nelson born in 1933?
Abbott
Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, a small farming town in Hill County, Texas, on April 29, 1933, and was raised there by his grandparents after his parents left.
Q 02As a boy, Willie Nelson earned his first paid gigs playing guitar in a local band devoted to which music?
Polka
Polka: at about ten Nelson was playing guitar with a local Bohemian dance band in beer joints, an awkward job for a boy raised in the Methodist church.
Q 03Which Willie Nelson composition became Patsy Cline's signature hit in 1961?
Crazy
Crazy began life under the title 'Stupid'; Patsy Cline, still hurting from a car crash, couldn't reach the high notes at the first session and came back weeks later to record her vocal.
Q 04Which singer had a 1961 hit with the Willie Nelson song 'Hello Walls'?
Faron Young
Faron Young's 'Hello Walls' spent nine weeks atop the country chart, crossed into the pop top 20 and gave Nelson, a songwriter newly arrived in Nashville, his first national attention.
Q 05Which branch of the US military did Willie Nelson join after high school, before a medical discharge?
Air Force
Willie Nelson joined the US Air Force in 1950, the year he finished high school, and persistent back problems brought him a medical discharge within a year.
Q 06To which city did Willie Nelson move in 1972, where the hippie music scene rejuvenated his career?
Austin
Austin was where Nelson settled in 1972: the long-haired crowd at the Armadillo World Headquarters embraced him, and he became the godfather of the city's progressive country scene.
Q 07What was the title of Willie Nelson's 1973 debut album for Atlantic Records?
Shotgun Willie
Shotgun Willie took its name from the nickname Nelson earned in an armed stand-off with his daughter's abusive husband; he wrote the title song on a sanitary-napkin wrapper in a hotel bathroom.
Q 08When Willie Nelson delivered Red Headed Stranger in 1975, Columbia executives first took the finished album for what?
A demo tape
A demo tape: the album was so sparse, little more than guitar, piano and drums, that the label wanted more added, but Nelson's contract gave him creative control and it went out untouched.
Q 09What crime is the fugitive of Red Headed Stranger on the run for?
Killing his wife and her lover
Killing his wife and her lover puts the album's preacher on the run; Nelson knew the title ballad from his days as a Fort Worth disc jockey, when he sang it on air as a children's lullaby.
Q 10Which Fred Rose song gave Willie Nelson his first number one as a singer?
Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain' topped the country chart in 1975 and won Nelson his first Grammy; after years of writing hits for others, his own breakthrough was a 1940s song by someone else.
Q 11Who produced Stardust, Willie Nelson's 1978 album of pop standards?
Booker T. Jones
Booker T. Jones, Nelson's neighbour in Malibu and the leader of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, was first asked to arrange a single standard; Nelson liked the result so much he had him produce the whole album.
Q 12Which song from Stardust won Willie Nelson the 1979 Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance?
Georgia on My Mind
'Georgia on My Mind' was one of ten boyhood favourites Nelson chose for Stardust; his version topped the country chart 18 years after Ray Charles took the song to number one.
Q 13Willie Nelson wrote 'On the Road Again' for which 1980 film he starred in?
Honeysuckle Rose
Q 21When the IRS auctioned Willie Nelson's seized property, what did many of his friends do?
Bought it back for him
Bought it back for him: friends purchased much of what was auctioned and gave or leased it back for a token fee; football coach Darrell Royal paid $117,350 for Nelson's country club.
Q 22What was the subtitle of The IRS Tapes, the album Willie Nelson recorded to pay off his tax debt?
Who'll Buy My Memories?
Who'll Buy My Memories? was just Nelson and his guitar, sold at first by phone order, with the proceeds going straight to the IRS.
Q 23What is the name of Willie Nelson's famously battered nylon-string guitar?
Trigger
Honeysuckle Rose cast Nelson as a touring country singer, and its makers asked him for a theme about life on the road; the song won a Grammy and an Oscar nomination.
Q 14On what did Willie Nelson famously scribble the lyrics to 'On the Road Again'?
A barf bag
A barf bag was what Nelson had to hand on a flight when the film's director and producer asked him for a song about life on the road, so he scribbled the lyrics on it there and then.
Q 15Which song, recorded a decade earlier by Elvis Presley, gave Willie Nelson a top-five pop hit in 1982?
Always on My Mind
'Always on My Mind' reached number 5 on the Hot 100 and won three Grammys; Nelson first heard it during sessions for a duet album, and cut it alone when his singing partner passed on it.
Q 16With which Spanish crooner did Willie Nelson record 'To All the Girls I've Loved Before'?
Julio Iglesias
Julio Iglesias was a voice Nelson heard on the radio in London; he liked it at once, his wife suggested a duet, and the 1984 single topped the country chart and reached the pop top five.
Q 17Which song, written by Johnny Bush, became Willie Nelson's traditional concert opener?
Whiskey River
'Whiskey River' was written by Johnny Bush, whose own 1972 single was climbing the chart just as a vocal disorder began to rob him of his voice; Nelson went on to open nearly every concert with it.
Q 18Who wrote 'Highwayman', the number one single that gave Willie Nelson's supergroup its name?
Jimmy Webb
Jimmy Webb wrote 'Highwayman' about one soul living four lives, as a highwayman, a sailor, a dam builder and a starship captain, which gave each of the four singers a verse of his own.
Q 19With which two musicians did Willie Nelson found Farm Aid in 1985?
John Mellencamp and Neil Young
Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young organised the first Farm Aid in 1985 after Bob Dylan remarked at Live Aid that some of the money should go to American family farmers.
Q 20The first Farm Aid filled the University of Illinois's Memorial Stadium in September 1985 in which city?
Champaign, Illinois
Champaign, Illinois, hosted what its founders expected to be a single benefit concert; the farm crisis outlasted the show, and Farm Aid became an annual event.
Trigger got its voice in 1969, when Nelson had the pickup from his old Baldwin fitted to it; the amplified nylon-string sound became his signature.
Q 24Which company built Willie Nelson's famous nylon-string guitar?
Martin
Martin's N-20 is a classical model with no pickguard, and decades of Nelson's hard playing have worn a gaping hole clean through its top.
Q 25Which musician was the first to carve his signature into the top of Nelson's famous guitar?
Leon Russell
Leon Russell was first: he asked Nelson to scratch, not ink, a name into his own guitar, saying it would be worth more one day, and Nelson had Russell carve one into his in return.
Q 26What did Willie Nelson vow to do if the IRS ever auctioned off his beloved guitar?
Quit performing
Quit performing is what Nelson said he would do when the guitar goes; when the IRS seized his property, his daughter Lana got it away to him in Hawaii, and it stayed out of sight until the debt was settled.
Q 27In which state was Willie Nelson's Ridgetop ranch, which burned down in December 1970?
Tennessee
Tennessee: when the house at Ridgetop, outside Nashville, caught fire, Nelson ran back in for his guitar and a stash of marijuana, then took the blaze as a sign and moved home to Texas.
Q 28What product did Willie Nelson's own company begin marketing to truck stops in 2005?
Biodiesel fuel
BioWillie sold biodiesel fuel, a blend made partly from vegetable oil, at truck stops, pitched by Nelson as a way for truckers to support American farmers while cutting emissions.
Q 29What is the name of the cannabis brand Nelson announced in 2015?
Willie's Reserve
Willie's Reserve was announced in 2015 for states that had legalised marijuana; the plan was a chain of shops, starting in Colorado, Washington and Alaska, that would also work with other growers.
Q 30With which country star did Willie Nelson record the duet album Pancho & Lefty?
Merle Haggard
Merle Haggard and Nelson took Townes Van Zandt's title song to number one on the country chart in 1983, and Van Zandt himself turns up in the video as one of the Mexican federales.