Bobbie Nelson, who played piano alongside her younger brother, Willie Nelson, for the better part of their lives, died on Thursday. She was 91.
Born on January 1, 1931, in Abbott, Texas, Bobbie was the first child of Myrle Marie and Ira Doyle Nelson, who were teenagers when they became parents. The couple separated shortly after the birth of her brother, Willie, with the two children being raised by their paternal grandparents.
At 16, she met an Army veteran named Bud Fletcher. The pair married within a year. Fletcher didn’t play music, but he saw something special in the instrumental chemistry between his wife and her brother, so he formed Bud Fletcher & the Texans, enlisting the Nelson patriarch, Ira, as rhythm guitarist. As the band got off the ground, Bobbie and Bud started a family. When she was 19, she gave birth to Randy; by 23, she had two more sons, Michael and Freddy.
Willie didn’t have a mainstream hit until Columbia released “Red Headed Stranger” in 1975, but those early Atlantic records established the aesthetic he’d mine for the rest of his career. Bobbie kept him grounded as the Family wove together country boogie, blues shuffles, cowboy ballads, pop standards and open-ended jams, playing with the dexterity needed for a band whose performances could be as improv-heavy as the Grateful Dead’s.
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