{"id":1301787,"date":"2018-12-25T00:01:13","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T07:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/articles.cmt.com\/?p=1775014"},"modified":"2018-12-25T00:01:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-25T07:01:13","slug":"nashville-skyline-willie-nelsons-timeless-christmas-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/nashville-skyline-willie-nelsons-timeless-christmas-song\/","title":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Willie Nelson\u2019s Timeless Christmas Song"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by CMT.com Staff<\/a><\/span> 31m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

(Editor\u2019s note: During the holiday season, thoughts turn to fond memories of friendships past and present. Chet Flippo, CMT\u2019s longtime editorial director who died in 2013, will always be remembered as a friend of country music and its artists. To celebrate his life and legacy, we\u2019re continuing a CMT.com holiday tradition by sharing one of his classic<\/em> Nashville Skyline columns first published in 2009.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Roy Orbison<\/a> made it a standard of his forever when he recorded it, but Willie Nelson<\/a> wrote his lovely Christmas song, \u201cPretty Paper,\u201d<\/a> about a guy I knew slightly. He was a man who had lost both his legs above the knee and \u2014 in those pre-miracle artificial limbs days \u2014 had his leg stumps covered with heavy leather padding and wore thick gloves to pull and slide and scoot his way up and down the sidewalk by the palms of his hands and on his stumps.<\/p>\n

He sold pencils from a tin cup affixed to his back and also peddled paper and ribbons at Christmas time, as I recall. He mainly worked the sidewalks by Leonard\u2019s Department Store in Fort Worth, Texas, where I was working part time in high school. I have sadly forgotten the man\u2019s name, but he always had a smile for everyone and a great sales pitch, and I sometimes would stop and say hello when I would see him. Every time I hear \u201cPretty Paper,\u201d I see this man in my mind\u2019s eye, to this day.<\/p>\n

Willie, who was then also living in Fort Worth (I met Willie years later and asked him about the source of \u201cPretty Paper\u201d), obviously noticed this man, too, and was affected enough to write a lasting tribute to this now-anonymous, handicapped street peddler. Willie later recorded the song, but when Orbison found it in 1963, he made it famous worldwide. Other artists who have recorded the song include Glen Campbell<\/a>, Kenny Chesney<\/a>, Chris Isaak<\/a> and Freddy Fender<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the lyrics to \u201cPretty Paper\u201d:<\/p>\n

Crowded streets busy feet hustle by you
Downtown shoppers, Christmas is nigh
There he sits all alone on the sidewalk
Hoping that you won\u2019t pass him by
Should you stop better not much too busy
Better hurry, my, how time does fly
And in the distance the ringing of laughter
And in the midst of the laughter he cries
Pretty paper, pretty ribbons of blue \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by CMT.com Staff 31m ago (Editor\u2019s note: During the holiday season, thoughts turn to fond memories of friendships past and present. Chet Flippo, CMT\u2019s longtime editorial director who died in 2013, will always be remembered as a friend of country music and its artists. To celebrate his life and legacy, we\u2019re continuing a CMT.com holiday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1301787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 05:56:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}