Wesley Schultz on "Pretty Paper" (special holiday reboot)
One by Willie
John Spong
4.6 • 898 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the holiday season in full effect, we’re reaching back to OBW’s earliest days to re-up this Nov 2020 episode with Lumineer Wesley Schultz on Willie’s initial contribution to the holiday canon, “Pretty Paper.” Wes was a little kid growing up in the New Jersey suburbs when he first fell for "Pretty Paper," which his folks played in the car as they drove their neighborhood checking out Xmas lights. We talk about that, the surreal story from Willie’s own childhood that prompted him to write it--and the way only Willie could write a Christmas song you want to hear all year long.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, Willie fans. It's me, John Spong, your host for One by Willie. And with the holiday season |
| 0:06.9 | going full bore, we thought we'd reach into the vault to bring you this old episode from November |
| 0:11.8 | 2020, in which Lumineer Wesley Schultz takes a look at Willie's primary contribution to the |
| 0:17.9 | Christmas standards canon, Pretty Paper. |
| 0:23.8 | That song was one of Willie's early hits as a songwriter, |
| 0:29.6 | when Roy Orbison wrote it to number 15 on the pop charts over the Christmas break in 1963. |
| 0:32.9 | But Wes and I focus on the version we both grew up on, |
| 0:37.3 | the one Willie himself recorded with Booker T. Jones in 1979, which became the title track |
| 0:39.3 | to his own collection of holiday favorites, which Wes and I agree is pretty much the only |
| 0:44.1 | album of Christmas music anybody needs to own. It's worth noting, too, that Wes is such a fan of |
| 0:49.7 | this song that two years after we recorded this episode, when he played at Willie's All-Star 90th |
| 0:54.8 | birthday shows at the Hollywood Bowl, Pretty Paper is one of the songs he covered. |
| 0:59.8 | Oh, and while I've got your attention, I wanted to let you know that we are hard at work |
| 1:03.5 | producing new One by Willie episodes to start airing early next year with guests like Taj Mahal, |
| 1:09.9 | Jamie Johnson, Matt Bermaninger from the National, |
| 1:13.4 | Dave Stewart from Eurythmics, and writer George Saunders. |
| 1:17.3 | We'll have more info on that as we get closer to the air date, but for now, here's |
| 1:21.7 | West Schultz, pretty paper, and our sincere wish that all y'all have the greatest holidays imaginable. |
| 1:29.4 | Hey there, I'm John Spong with Texas Monthly magazine, and this is One by Willie, |
| 1:35.3 | a podcast in which I talk each week to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie |
| 1:40.8 | song that they really love. And on this episode, we talked to Wesley Schultz from the Luminers. |
| 1:47.1 | He's the band's lead singer and co-writer of all the songs, |
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