Willie Nelson’s Sister Bobbie Nelson Once Lost Custody of Her Kids for Performing With Him in Saloons
Before country music icon Willie Nelson was an international superstar, he played music in saloons and honky-tonks. And he brought his sister, Bobbie Nelson, along to play piano in the early years. But a shakeup with custody of her kids eventually kept her from doing what she loved for a long time.
Read on to learn why a judge thought Bobbie wouldn’t be able to provide for her kids, and how the musical siblings eventually brought their paths back together.
Bobbie Nelson’s life with Willie Nelson before her kids
Both the Nelsons were born in the early ’30s and found their remarkable talents in childhood. With Bobbie on piano and Willie on guitar, they knew they had something special from the start.
They both started building families, and Bobbie had three sons in her first marriage. She continued to make what she could playing with Willie in small businesses around Texas. But eventually, a court put an end to it — at least for a while.
Bobbie Nelson lost her kids for playing music with Willie Nelson
After Bobbie’s marriage started to fall apart, she moved back with her grandmother — the woman she and Willie called Mama Nelson. She wrote in Me and Sister Bobbie, her co-memoir with Willie, that her husband could no longer provide, his parents refused to help, and she couldn’t pay rent on her own. So, she went back to the person who raised her.
It wasn’t long after she moved out that her in-laws had the children taken from her. They said she couldn’t provide for them, and a judge agreed. Though she was taking typing classes with hopes of becoming a secretary, and explained in court she didn’t smoke or drink but enjoyed performing with her hog-loving brother, she was deemed unable to support them.
”This sharp-tongued lawyer called me the kind of woman whose only means of earning a living was playing piano in honky-tonks,” she shared. ”He referred to me as a harlot. I broke down in tears.”
After naming her in-laws permanent custodians of her children, the judge told Bobbie she needed to change her lifestyle if she wanted her kids back. It was unseemly for a young mother to make a living playing music in nightclubs, the judge lectured. So, she stopped playing music with Willie until the kids were older for fear of losing custody again.
Willie wrote that Bobbie could “out honky-tonk any honky-tonk piano player in town,” but she refused for years because it might hurt her case.
Willie Nelson reunited with Bobbie Nelson and her kids, and ’the circle was unbroken’
After conforming to the judge’s demands and battling her ex-family to get her kids back, Bobbie eventually moved to Willie’s property in Tennessee with her teenage sons and a new husband in the late ’60s. In their co-memoir, Willie said it was what he always wanted: “The circle was unbroken.”
She didn’t join his band until her kids were old enough to care for themselves. But the Nelson siblings reunited in the ’70s and continued making songs like ”Who’ll Buy My Memories” until she died at 91 in 2022.
Before her death, Bobbie said her brother filled her life with love and music — something she was thankful for until the end.
