Willie Nelson has a lot to talk about. The singer, who turned 71 in April, released the album “Outlaws and Angels” earlier this month. He also released two albums last year, “Crazy: the Demo Sessions” and “The Essential Willie Nelson.”

He won his sixth Grammy in February of last year — country collaboration with vocals for “Mendocino County Line” with Lee Ann Womack.

His collection of early demos — sparse recordings not intended for commercial release but for pitching songs to other artists — includes “Crazy,” a country and pop smash for Patsy Cline in 1961.

Nelson, who performs Sept. 25 at the Reno Hilton, recalls how he and some friends brought the song to Cline after a night of drinking at a famous Nashville honky-tonk.

“Charlie Dick (Cline’s husband) and I and Hank Cochran were drinking beer at Tootsie’s,” he said in a recent interview with Knight Ridder Newspapers. “After Tootsie’s closed, they decided it was time to wake up Patsy and play it for her. I was hesitant to get out of the car. I stayed in the car, and in a little while, she came out and made me come in the house. This was like two or three in the morning. She recorded it the next day.”

Rocker Sheryl Crow, a friend of Nelson’s for years, said she’s long admired his songwriting, and calls “Crazy” one of the greatest compositions ever.

“Willie has written the soundtrack to all of our lives,” Crow said.

Nelson made the demos for the publishing company Pamper Music between 1960 and 1966, years before he grew his hair long and courted rock audiences. About half the tracks feature him with his guitar, and the rest with a crack studio band.

Ironically, his restrained style on the demo tapes brought him his greatest commercial success in the 1970s.

When Nelson tried to break through as a singer in the early 1960s, his off-the-beat, conversational delivery was unconventional by Nashville standards. Producers buried his nasal vocals under horns, strings and choruses as was customary of the era’s smooth “Nashville Sound.”

With the demos, Nelson had the freedom to record the songs as he wanted. The spare sound was the same he would use on his self-produced breakthrough album “Red Headed Stranger” in 1975.

Nelson arrived in Nashville from Houston in 1960 with few contacts and little money. He began hanging out at Tootsie’s next to the Ryman Auditorium, where the Grand Ole Opry played. There, he met Cochran, another young songwriter who later wrote classics such as “I Fall to Pieces” for Cline and “Make the World Go Away” for Eddy Arnold.

Cochran had just joined Pamper Music and tried to get Nelson hired, too, but Pamper wouldn’t pay him the $50-a-week salary. Cochran volunteered to forgo his upcoming raise so Nelson could get the job.

As a singer, though, his early output was uneven. He made more than a dozen albums before he hit his stride with “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys,” “On the Road Again,” “Always on My Mind” and “Whiskey River.”

The extent of Nelson’s influence is apparent on “The Essential Willie Nelson,” part of a series of reissues marking his 70th birthday. The 41 songs span his career and include duets with obvious and not-so-obvious artists — Ray Charles, Julio Iglesias, U2, Leon Russell, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Womack and an unreleased track with Aerosmith.

Nelson says he tries to stretch his boundaries without overdoing it.