Jessi Colter

Jessi Colter rose during the 1970s Outlaw Country surge as the sole female voice on the landmark Wanted! The Outlaws collection, and she has kept issuing albums that carry forward its defiant tone and texture. Along with fellow outsiders such as her husband Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, she spent nearly ten years honing her craft before recasting herself as an independent figure early in the decade. Her breakthrough arrived with the 1975 single “I’m Not Lisa,” which topped Billboard’s country survey and climbed to number four on the Hot 100. Additional mid-decade successes—“What’s Happened to Blue Eyes” and “It’s Morning (And I Still Love You)”—followed, yet her visibility faded through the 1980s once she and Jennings scored with the measured ballad “Storms Never Last.” After an extended quiet period she resurfaced in 2006 with Out of the Ashes, helmed by producer Don Was. Across the subsequent twenty years she issued music sparingly, among them the Lenny Kaye-produced The Psalms and the 2023 album Edge of Forever, shaped by Margo Price and shaped further by her son Shooter Jennings.

Before adopting the stage name Jessi Colter—an homage to ancestor Jess Colter, an associate of outlaws Frank and Jesse James—she recorded as Mirriam Johnson. Born May 25, 1943, in Phoenix, Arizona, she departed her Pentecostal upbringing as a teenager to perform alongside Duane Eddy, the renowned guitarist known for his twang, after her sister Sharon arranged the introduction. Johnson and Eddy wed in 1961, the same year he logged his final Top Ten Billboard entry and she issued her debut single, “Lonesome Road.” The couple toured for several years before settling in Los Angeles.

Credited as Mirriam Eddy, she worked throughout the late 1960s as a staff songwriter and, following her 1968 divorce from Duane Eddy, continued placing material with Nancy Sinatra, Don Gibson, and Dottie West. Back in Phoenix after the split she encountered Waylon Jennings, who quickly became enamored. He invited her to cut a duet and guided her toward a contract with RCA Victor. The pair exchanged vows on October 27, 1969, at which point she took the name Jessi Colter.

Chet Atkins and Jennings jointly oversaw her lone RCA release, the 1970 album A Country Star Is Born. When it drew scant notice, the couple issued two duets—“Suspicious Minds” and “Under Your Spell Again”—under the billing Waylon & Jessi. Jennings spent the early seventies extricating himself from Nashville’s constraints, a process crystallized on the 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes. His first string of number-one singles began with 1974’s “This Time,” opening the door for Colter to join Capitol and deliver 1975’s I’m Jessi Colter.

Powered by “I’m Not Lisa” and “What’s Happened to Blue Eyes,” that debut reached number four on Billboard’s country chart. The two 1976 follow-ups, Jessi and Diamond in the Rough, matched the same peak; RCA then assembled older tracks into Wanted! The Outlaws, the platinum-certified compilation that also featured Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Tompall Glaser and became the first country album to earn RIAA platinum status.

Colter maintained a profile through the remainder of the seventies, yet only “I Thought I Heard You Calling My Name” registered inside the country Top 40 between 1976 and 1980. The 1981 duet set Leather and Lace with Jennings yielded the hits “Storms Never Last” and “Wild Side of Life”/“It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” marking her last substantial chart impact; she exited Capitol following that year’s Ridin’ Shotgun. After issuing the Chips Moman-produced Rock and Roll Lullaby on Triad in 1984, she ceased recording new material.

Throughout the balance of the eighties Colter focused on Jennings’s recovery from addiction and health setbacks. By the early nineties her attention turned to children’s music, culminating in the home-video release Jessi Colter Sings Just for Kids: Songs from Around the World, which included a recitation by Jennings. She also guested on his final album, the 2000 live set Never Say Die, issued shortly before his death in 2002.

Capitol compiled An Outlaw…A Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter in 2003. Two years later Shout! Factory issued Out of the Ashes. Over the next couple of years Colter and guitarist Lenny Kaye developed The Psalms through improvised vocal lines; Kaye later completed the arrangements. The finished album appeared in March 2017, the same year she released her memoir An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home.

Colter returned in 2023 with Edge of Forever, an album produced by her protégé Margo Price and mixed by Shooter Jennings.