Bonnie Raitt Thinks Birthday Boy Willie Nelson Is a Little Bit Cheshire Cat and a Little Bit Yoda

In a special icon-on-icon birthday tribute, the thirteen-time Grammy winner talks about duetting on one of the most important records of Willie’s career, plus covering “Night Life” with blues legend B. B. King.

By John Spong

April 29, 2025

Given their nearly fifty years of friendship, and all the Farm Aid appearances, onstage jam sessions, and late-night hangs that implies, it’s weird to think that Bonnie Raitt and Willie Nelson have spent such little time in the studio together. In 1979, the two hooked up with Leon Russell for a loping cover of the jazz-blues standard “Trouble in Mind.” In 2002, Raitt harmonized with Willie on an eloquent reading of a pensive pop ballad about regret, “You Remain.” But the hands-down high point of their studio collaborations, and as beautiful a recording as either ever cut, was their 1993 duet “Getting Over You”—which became the cornerstone of one of the most important albums of Willie’s long career, Across the Borderline.

(Read a transcript of this episode below.)

Even the hardest-core Willie lovers tend to forget how difficult the early nineties were for Willie. Artistically, only one of his first eight singles of the decade cracked the top twenty, and three failed to even chart in the U.S. His record label, Columbia, was talking about relegating him to legacy-act status, and there was a real possibility it would drop him, as it had unceremoniously done his friend Johnny Cash, in 1986. Personally, life was nigh-on impossible. His famous IRS tax battle and the $16.7 million the feds claimed he owed had turned him into a late-night talk show punch line. And in December 1991, his oldest son, Billy, died suddenly. 1992 was and remains the only year Willie didn’t release any new music, going back to 1958.