A Tale Out of Luck (33 page)

Nelson’s career has been recognized with eight Grammy wins, a President’s Merit Award, a Grammy Legend Award, and the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, the Academy of Country Music bestowed him with the prestigious Gene Weed Special Achievement Award honoring Nelson’s “unprecedented and genre-defying contributions to popular music over his nearly fifty-year career.”

In 2007, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) named Nelson a BMI Icon, declaring that his “ascendance to internationally-renowned treasure is a singular path marked by self-belief and musical brilliance.” That same year he released the two-disc album
Last of the Breed
, a Grammy award-winning collaboration with Merle Haggard and Ray Price that features twenty-two newly-recorded country classics.