* En anglais uniquement
Perhaps best known in conjunction with her husband
Waylon Jennings,
Jessi Colter was the only significant female singer/songwriter to emerge from the mid-'70s "outlaw" movement. Born
Miriam Johnson on May 25, 1943, in Phoenix, Arizona,
Colter in fact affiliated herself with outlaw imagery long before the musical movement blossomed, adopting her stage name in honor of ancestor Jess Colter, a real-life train robber and counterfeiter who rode with Frank and Jesse James.
Raised in a strict Pentecostal home,
Colter was just a teenager when she left Phoenix to tour as a vocalist with twang-guitar innovator
Duane Eddy, whom she met through her sister Sharon, the wife of producer
"Cowboy" Jack Clement. In 1962, she and
Eddy married, and after several years of extensive touring (mostly throughout Europe), the couple settled in Los Angeles in 1966. Under the name
Miriam Eddy, she wrote songs for
Don Gibson,
Dottie West, and
Nancy Sinatra.
In 1968, she and
Eddy divorced, and
Colter returned to Phoenix. There she met
Waylon Jennings, who was so taken with her voice that he invited her to record a duet with him. After helping secure
Colter a record deal with his label, RCA,
Jennings co-produced the tracks that would make up her 1970 debut, A Country Star Is Born; by the time of the record's release, the couple had already married. Under the name Waylon & Jessi, they also issued two Top 40 singles, a 1970 cover of the
Elvis Presley hit "Suspicious Minds" and 1971's "Under Your Spell Again."
Colter's commercial breakthrough came in 1975 when her composition "I'm Not Lisa," a single from the LP
I'm Jessi Colter, hit number one on Billboard's country charts while also making the Top Five on the pop charts; the album spawned another hit in "What's Happened to Blue Eyes." In 1976, she released two more highly successful albums,
Jessi and
Diamonds in the Rough.
Also in 1976,
Colter teamed with
Jennings,
Willie Nelson, and
Tompall Glaser for the album
Wanted! The Outlaws, which at the time of its release was the biggest-selling album in country history, and the first country album certified platinum in sales. In between spending much of the remainder of the decade on tour with her husband and
Nelson, she also released the albums Miriam in 1977 and That's the Way the Cowboy Rocks and Rolls in 1978.
Colter and
Jennings re-teamed in 1981 for Leather and Lace, an album of duets featuring the hits "Storms Never Last" and the medley "Wild Side of Life/It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." In the same year, she released the solo album Ridin' Shotgun, which produced her final chart hit in 1982's "Holdin' On." As the 1980s progressed,
Colter's success tapered off; 1985's Rock and Roll Lullaby, produced by
Chips Moman, was released only on a small label. By the early '90s, she began directing her energies toward performing children's music, and starred in the home video Jessi Colter Sings Just for Kids: Songs from Around the World, which featured a guest appearance by
Jennings, who recited some of his poetry. Capitol released the An Outlaw...a Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter anthology in 2003. It was followed by
Out of the Ashes on the Shout! Factory label in 2006. Over the next two years,
Colter and guitarist
Lenny Kaye recorded improvisational melodies for Psalms. During the next decade,
Kaye worked on finishing the album by adding additional instrumentation.
The Psalms was released in March 2017. ~ Jason Ankeny