Willie Nelson Takes Novel Approach

Nelson's First Work Of Fiction, Co-Written With Mike Blakely, Is "A Tale Out Of Luck"

(CBS)  With over 200 albums to his name and eight Grammy Awards, there's little Willie Nelson hasn't done.

He's also been expanding his reach into the literary world with three nonfiction books and now, "A Tale Out of Luck," co-written with Mike Blakely, is his first foray into fiction.

"You were saying Mike Blakely's name should be bigger?" Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith asked.

"Yeah. Mine should be the little one and his should be the big one because he did all of the work," Nelson said. "I gave him an idea, told him about the town. My ideas about the story and he went away and wrote it."

"He did all the work?" Smith asked.

"Yeah. Then he did a screenplay so there may be a movie," Nelson said.

"Well, that ought to be fun. It comes out of Luck, Texas, which was a movie set town, right?" Smith asked.

"Yeah. I built it to do the Red Headed Stranger movie and since then I've used it for weddings and funerals, what have you," Nelson said.

"And so it was from hanging around there that you sort of got the inspiration for this novel?" Smith asked.

Well, I built the town to do movies and things around it. And then they wanted me to write this book," Nelson said. "And they, fortunately, gave me Mike Blakely to do the work."

"Do the heavy lifting?" Smith asked.

"Do the heavy lifting," Nelson agreed with a chuckle. "So he has written a great book, I think. So we want to take this book and do a movie."

"Sounds like a good time," Smith said. "You know, I'm trying to think of the movie you did with Jessica Simpson."

"Dukes of Hazzard," Nelson said.

"Dukes of Hazzard. She said that you actually had some influence on her. She's going to be on the show tomorrow," Smith said. "She is starting to be kind of 'country-fied.'"

"Yes, she is. She has a new album out. It's good. She can sing and proved it to everybody. Got some great songs in there," Nelson said.

"There you go. Speaking of interesting musical collaborations, though, the number one jazz album in the country right now is you with Wynton Marsalis. How did that happen?" Smith asked.

"We've done a couple of things together at the Apollo, with Ray Charles, over the years and we really liked each other and liked playing music together," Nelson said. "And we decided to do some shows at the Lincoln Center. We did four shows there and we took the best of them and recorded them and did a DVD on it. And it's been out a while now, what, number one jazz, so I was happy."

"It works. And, finally, last, but not least, Farm Aid happens again. You've done more than 20 of these," Smith said.

"Twenty-two, I think, now. September 20th in Boston," Nelson said.

"In Boston."

"Yeah. And, you know, you wouldn't think Farm Aid in Boston, you know, it's not thought of as farm community, but it is," Nelson said. "There's a lot of farmers up there."