Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson, music's most prolific country outlaw, long ago said "pshaw" to the Nashville dream machine. Instead, he chose to forge a legacy of tangled-but-truthful hits — "Crazy," "On the Road Again" and "Always on My Mind," to name a few — that he delivered with a reedy, Whiskey-River-soaked twang in his tenor and a twinkle in his eye. All-American yet wholly original, the Red Headed Stranger also stands as an inspiration to environmentalists, pot smokers and income-tax evaders everywhere — and even today, at 70-plus years young, he continues to roast country music's sacred cows, as on his recent gay-caballero cover, "Cowboys are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)."