Country singers Willie Nelson, Johnny Horton born on April 30

Hello fellow Texans and friends of Texas. Today is Friday, April 30,  2010.

On April 30, 1933, Willie Hugh Nelson, country singer-songwriter, author, poet and actor, was born. The Hill County native reached his greatest fame during the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, but remains iconic, especially in American popular culture. He continues to tour, record, and perform.

His grandparents gave him mail-order music lessons starting at age six. He wrote his first song when he was seven and was playing in a local band at age nine. Willie played the guitar, while his sister Bobbie played the piano. He met Bud Fletcher, a fiddler, and two siblings joined his band, Bohemian Fiddlers, while Nelson was in high school.

Beginning in high school Nelson worked as a disc jockey for KHBR in Hillsboro. Later he was a DJ in Pleasanton in South Texas while singing in honky tonk bars.

When Nelson graduated from Abbott High School in 1951 he joined the Air Force but was discharged after nine months due to back problems. He then studied agriculture at Baylor University in 1954.

In 1956, Nelson moved to Vancouver, Wash., to begin a musical career, recording "Lumberjack," which was written by Leon Payne. The single sold fairly well, but did not establish a career.

Nelson continued to work in radio and clubs in Vancouver and sold a song called "Family Bible" -- a hit for Claude Gray in 1960 considered a gospel music classic -- for $50.

Nelson moved to Nashville in 1960.  but Unable to land a record contract, he did receive a publishing contract at Pamper Music. After Ray Price recorded Nelson's "Night Life" (reputedly the most covered country song of all time), Nelson joined Price's touring band as a bass player. While playing with Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys, many of Nelson's songs became hits for some of country and pop music's biggest stars of the time.

Most famous was "Crazy" by Patsy Cline.

Nelson signed with Liberty Records in 1961 and released several singles, including "Willingly" (sung with his wife, Shirley Collie) and "Touch Me." In 1965, Nelson moved to RCA Victor Records and joined the Grand Ole Opry. He released a string of mid-level chart hits throughout the remainder of the 1960s and into the early '70s, before retiring and moving to Austin.

While in Austin, Nelson decided to return to music. His popularity in Austin soared, as he played his own brand of country music marked by rock and roll, jazz, western swing, and folk influences.

In the mid 1970's, Nelson purchased property near Lake Travis in Austin and built Pedernales Studio. The studio underwent state of the art renovations in the mid 1990's, and many top recording artists adorn its client list. Its amenities include a 9-hole golf course, tennis courts and an Olympic size swimming pool.

Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings him at Willie's 4th of July Picnic 1972.
Nelson moved to Columbia Records, where he was given complete creative control over his work. The result was the critically acclaimed, massively popular concept album, Red Headed Stranger (1975). Although Columbia was reluctant to release an album with primarily a guitar and piano for accompaniment, Nelson insisted (with the assistance of Waylon Jennings) and the album was a huge hit, partially because it included a popular cover of "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" (written by Fred Rose in 1945). It was Nelson's first No. 1 hit as a singer.

Jennings was also achieving success in country music in the early 1970s, and the pair were soon combined into outlaw country -- "outlaw" because it did not conform to Nashville standards. Nelson's outlaw image was cemented with the release of the album Wanted! The Outlaws, with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser,  had country music's first platinum album.

Nelson began acting, appearing in The Electric Horseman (1979), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), Thief (1981), and Barbarosa (1982). Also in 1982 he played "Red Loon," in Coming Out of the Ice with John Savage. In 1984 he starred in the movie Songwriter with Kris Kristoferson guest starring. He then had the lead role in Red Headed Stranger (1986, with Morgan Fairchild), Wag the Dog (1997), Gone Fishin (1997) as Billy 'Catch' Pooler, the 1986 TV movie Stagecoach (with Johnny Cash), Dukes of Hazzard (2006) and Surfer, Dude (2008).

The Eighties saw a series of hit singles: "Midnight Rider" (1980; a cover of the Allman Brothers song, which Nelson recorded for The Electric Horseman soundtrack), "On the Road Again" (1982) from the movie Honeysuckle Rose and "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" (a duet with Julio Iglesias). There were also more popular albums, including Pancho & Lefty (1982, with Merle Haggard), WWII (1982, with Waylon Jennings) and Take it to the Limit (1983, with Waylon Jennings).

In the mid-1980s, Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Johnny Cash formed a group called The Highwaymen. They achieved unexpectedly massive success, including platinum record sales and worldwide touring. He became more involved in charity work, such as establishing the Farm Aid concerts in 1985.

In 1990, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) handed Nelson a bill for $16.7 million in back taxes and seized most of his assets to help pay the charges. He sued accounting firm Price Waterhouse, contending that they put him into tax shelters that were later disallowed. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.[8] His debts were paid by 1993.

In 2004, Nelson and his wife Annie became partners with Bob and Kelly King in the building of two Pacific Bio-diesel plants, one in Salem, Oregon, and the other at Carl's Corner, Texas, (the Texas plant was founded by Carl Cornelius, a longtime Nelson friend). In 2005, Nelson and several other business partners formed Willie Nelson Biodiesel, a firm marketing bio-diesel bio-fuel to truck stops. The fuel is made from vegetable oil (mainly soybean oil), and can be burned without modification in diesel engines.

On January 9, 2005, Nelson headlined an all-star concert at Austin Music Hall to benefit the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Tsunami Relief Austin to Asia raised an estimated $120,000 for UNICEF and two other organizations.

Nelson questions the official story of what happened on Sept. 11. On Feb. 4, 2008, Nelson appeared on Alex Jones's radio show and talked about the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, stating his belief that the Twin Towers and WTC7 were imploded: "I saw one fall and it was just so symmetrical, I said wait a minute I just saw that last week at the casino in Las Vegas and you see these implosions all the time and the next one fell and I said hell there's another one - and they're trying to tell me that an airplane did it and I can't go along with that."

Willie Nelson has been married four times and fathered nine children.
Annie D'Angelo has been his wife since 1991. Their children are Lukas Autry and Jacob Micah.

On April 30, 1925, singer John Gale “Johnny” Horton was born in Los Angeles. He was the son of John Lolly and Ella Claudia Horton. His parents moved back and forth from Los Angeles to East Texas before settling in East Texas.

He graduated from high school in Gallatin Cherokee County, and attended junior college in Jacksonville and Kilgore. He earned a basketball scholarship to Baylor University in Waco and went from there to Seattle University. After college, Horton worked in Alaska and California in the fishing industry.

In 1950 he began singing country music on KXLA in Pasadena, Calif., and then Cliffie Stone's Hometown Jamboree on KLAC-TV, Los Angeles. He joined the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport in 1955 and performed under the name the Singing Fisherman. Companies he recorded with included Mercury, Dot, and Columbia.

Horton was known for his versatility, but his specialty was honky-tonk. In 1956 he had his first hit, "Honky Tonk Man." His first No. 1 recording in the country was "When It's Springtime in Alaska," released in 1959. At that time both country and popular-music radio stations began playing his music.

His more popular saga songs, including "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Sink the Bismarck," reached positions on both country and pop charts.

Horton died in a traffic accident on Nov. 5, 1960 in Milam County, after a performance in Austin. Horton was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in Haughton, La. His song, "The Battle of New Orleans" won the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country and Western Recording, and in 2002 it won a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. He was an inductee in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

His wife, Billie Jean (Jones) Horton, became a widow for the second time. She had been married previously to Hank Williams.

Both Horton and Williams played their last shows at the Skyline Club in Austin. Both died in Cadillacs.

On April 30, 1986, the city of Houston proclaimed Albert Moses Levy Memorial Day, in honor of Jews who participated in the fight for Texas independence. Levy was born in 1800, probably in Amsterdam. His family immigrated to Virginia in 1818, and he completed medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1832. After the death of his first wife in 1835, he went to New Orleans, where he joined the New Orleans Greys and left for Texas.

He was quickly appointed surgeon in chief of the volunteer army of Texas and was wounded at the siege of Bexar. In 1836, after leaving the army, Levy joined the Texas Navy. In 1837 his ship, the Independence, was captured by two Mexican brigs-of-war. After three months he escaped and walked back to Texas, where he set up medical practice in Matagorda. Levy committed suicide in May 1848.

On April 30, 1768, Gaspar José de Solís wrote in his diary of a striking encounter with a Tejas Indian woman in what is now Houston County. Fray Solís was inspecting missions for the College of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. His diary presents a valuable contemporary account of the missions, country, and Indians of Texas.

The woman, Santa Adiva, held high status in her village. There, Solís writes, the inhabitants were nearly naked, "much painted with vermillion and other colors," and wearing beads and feathers. Solís states that the Indians were "great thieves and drunkards because whiskey and wine are furnished to them by the French." Santa Adiva, whose name was said to mean "great lady" or "principal lady" and who was accorded queen-like status, lived in a large, multi-room house, to which other Indians brought gifts. Solís reports that she had five husbands and many servants.

On April 30, 1675, an expedition led by Fernando del Bosque and Fray Juan Larios left Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe mission in present-day Monclova, Mexico, to convert the Indians of Coahuila. On May 11 the expedition reached the Rio Grande, probably a little below the present site of Eagle Pass. Bosque took formal possession of the river, erected a wooden cross, and renamed the river the San Buenaventura del Norte.

On May 15 members of the expedition celebrated what may have been the first Mass on Texas soil, in present-day Maverick County. In all, the Spaniards traveled 40 leagues past the Rio Grande and made six halts in south-central Texas. They returned to Guadalupe on June 12.