“I’ve wondered about the man that inspired that song.”
Willie Nelson wrote those words in 2016, in a short Christmas book he named after his own holiday classic. Now, at 93, he has recorded the song one more time.
On Friday, Nov. 6, Legacy Recordings released a new “Pretty Paper” by Willie and Brandon Coleman, the lead singer of The Red Clay Strays. The Alabama band won Vocal Group of the Year at the CMA Awards last year, and it is nominated again for the show on Nov. 18.
Willie wrote the song in 1963. Roy Orbison released it that November, and his single went to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. Willie cut his own version in 1964 and another in 1979.
If you have only heard it on holiday radio, the song paints a lonely scene. Shoppers hurry through a busy downtown at Christmastime, and one man sits alone, calling out to them while nobody stops.
Here is the new version, with Brandon singing alongside Willie.
Willie and Brandon Coleman sing the new “Pretty Paper”
The man in that song was real, and Willie saw him often.
Years before the hits, Willie worked as a country radio DJ in Fort Worth, Texas. In his autobiography, as quoted by Texas Co-op Power, he described “a man without legs who sold pencils and what he called pretty paper in front of Leonard’s Department Store in Fort Worth.” The man called those two words out to holiday shoppers, and they became the title.
Willie never learned his story. According to Whiskey Riff, he walked past the man on his way to work and regrets that he never stopped to talk with him. Garden & Gun reported much the same, that Willie always wondered what might have happened if he had stopped.
The answer came from readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Columnist Bud Kennedy started writing about the song in 2004. According to Texas Co-op Power, a rancher from the small town of Santo named Bob Neely read one of those columns and called him. Neely said the man was his former neighbor, Frankie Brierton.
The sources tell the timing differently. Texas Co-op Power says Kennedy confirmed the name in December 2017. Whiskey Riff says Star-Telegram columnists identified him back in 2004.
The family’s account also differs from Willie’s memory. Willie remembered a man without legs. According to Brierton’s family, an illness when he was a boy left his legs too weak to walk, and he turned down a wheelchair. His daughter, Lillian Compte of Conroe, Texas, described how he got by.
“He sold pencils. He crawled around on his hands and knees. But we never did without,” she said.
He worked the crowds in Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston. He also sold at the State Fair of Texas. He passed away in 1973. His family says he never knew the song was about him.
Roy Orbison’s record is the one most fans heard first.
Hear Roy Orbison’s original 1963 recording
Here is Willie singing it himself at a 1993 taping in Austin.
Willie sings “Pretty Paper” on Austin City Limits in 1993
Lillian heard the song for years before anyone connected it to her father. “It’s a pretty song. I just never thought of it being about my father,” she said, according to Texas Hill Country. This Christmas, Willie is singing it again. Now the man who called out to those shoppers has a name.