The guitarist who became a “folk hero” to Willie Nelson
With someone like Willie Nelson, who has released such a massive amount of music and has dabbled in a large variety of sounds, it is hard to adequately summarise his attitude towards music. That being said, it’s always worth trying. His quote, “According to my grandmother, the definition of music is anything that’s pleasing to the ear. Once I learned that, I quit thinking about it,” seems like an excellent place to start.
The above perfectly sums up Willie Nelson. As a musician who has performed almost every genre under the sun and released over 100 albums, it’s clear that his whole attitude has always been simply trying to make something that sounds good. Cohesion as an artist and whether or not it will make sense to people comes as an afterthought. His primary consideration is whether it sounds good; if it does, then it makes sense to him.
He credits his grandmother with helping him develop this attitude; however, one of his favourite guitarists, who he later dubbed a “folk hero”, will have also played a part. In his book, he talks about the musician Django Reinhardt, both how he discovered his music and what that discovery did for him.
“I’d discovered Django Reinhardt, the Romani guitarist who grew up in Belgium. No other musician has had a greater influence on me,” he said. Nelson recalled when his music was initially brought to him and how much it spoke to him on a sonic level. “I felt like his guitar was talking to me. Django filled every song he played… even sad songs… with pure joy. His songs were like little short stories.”
The other essential part of Reinhardt that spoke to Nelson was his ability to overcome adversity in the pursuit of good music. He had a troubled upbringing, and an accident when he was younger meant that he might have never played guitar again. Nelson recalls, “When I heard Django’s personal story, he became like a folk hero to me,” he said, “At 18, he was almost killed in a caravan fire. His legs were burned so badly that he was told one had to be amputated. He refused. Two of the fingers on his left hand also suffered severe burns to the point of paralysis.”
As a result of the burns, Reinhardt, a promising guitarist at the time, was told that he would never play again. The musician took the news in his stride, considering it before gently dismissing the same. “Not only did he keep playing, but he found a way to turn the handicap into an advantage,” said Nelson, “He reinvented his guitar by soloing with only two fingers. He got better.”
There is also something quietly liberating in how Nelson talks about Reinhardt, because it reflects the way he has always approached his own career. Nelson never chased technical perfection or fashionable sounds. Like Reinhardt, he trusted instinct over instruction, feeling over theory. If something worked emotionally, that was enough. It explains why his catalogue moves so freely between outlaw country, jazz standards, pop ballads and gospel without ever sounding confused.
In that way, Reinhardt did not just influence Nelson as a guitarist, but as a philosophy. Both men treated music as a living thing rather than a fixed discipline, something to be bent and reshaped by whoever was brave enough to follow their ear. It is why Nelson’s music still feels human and approachable, even at its most unconventional. Rules may give music structure, but for artists like Nelson and Reinhardt, freedom is where the real beauty lives.
Though the two types of music and their ongoing circumstances differ, Nelson and Reinhardt’s attitude towards creating music remains somewhat consistent. They will dismiss rules and push aside the musical norm to make sweet sounds. Who says that a guitar has to be played a certain way? Who says a musician should stick with one particular genre? Certainly, Reinhardt and Nelson don’t think so, and the result is excellent music that moves and inspires. We can read into music as much as we like, but it is worth remembering that the most crucial part that should always take precedence is something that sounds good.
