Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: An Outlaw and a Lady
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Johnson, Mirriam
BIRTHDATE: 5/25/1943
WEBSITE: http://www.officialjessicolter.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.officialjessicolter.com/BIO.html * http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/01/12/509489546/a-beautiful-expression-of-belief-by-jessi-colter
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 83065750
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n83065750
HEADING: Colter, Jessi
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670 __ |a Email from CGarP, Sept. 20, 2002 |b (Jennings, W. Legends [SR], p2002: insert (Jessie Colter))
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PERSONAL
Born May 25, 1943, in Phoenix, AZ; married Duane Eddy (a guitarist), 1962 (divorced, 1968); married Waylon Jennings (a musician; died, 2002), c. 1970; children: (first marriage) Jennifer; (second marriage) Waylon Albright.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Musician, songwriter, and author. Recordings include Lonesome Road, 1961, A Country Star Is Born, 1970, I’m Not Lisa, 1975, I’m Jessi Colter, 1975, Jessi, Diamond in the Rough, and The Outlaws, all 1976, Miriam, 1977, and That’s the Way a Cowboy Rocks and Rolls, 1978, Leather and Lace (with Waylon Jennings), 1981, Ridin’ Shotgun, 1981, Rock and Roll Lullaby, 1984, Jessi Colter Sings Just for Kids: Songs from Around the World, 1996, Out of the Ashes, 2006, and The Psalms, 2017.
WRITINGS
Also author of songs under names Miriam Johnson and Miriam Johnson Eddy.
SIDELIGHTS
Jessi Colter was a country music recording star in her own right in the 1970s and 1980s, but she is perhaps better known for her marriage to country music legend Waylon Jennings—a relationship that lasted for more than three decades and only ended with Jennings’ death in 2002. In her memoir An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home, Colter details her relationship with her husband, but also delves into the story of her own music-making career. “Colter grew up singing holy songs in a Christian Pentecostal home,” said Ann Powers in an NPR review, “where the sacred defined daily life in the presence of the secular; her mother was a preacher, but her dad built and drove race cars.” “You need not travel very far into Colter’s memoir,” explained a No Depression website reviewer, “to encounter its revelatory power and to get a little taste of the journey that’s to come. In just a few sentences, Colter introduces us to the two defining aspects of her life, music and faith, as she reflects on growing up playing piano in her mother’s church.”
Under her birth name, Miriam Johnson, Colter began writing songs when she was still a teenager. It was not until she married Jennings, however, that her career took off, with albums like The Outlaws and Leather and Lace. “Over the years [Colter] and Jennings endured ups and downs,” stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer; “… throughout, her Christian faith sustained her.” “During moments of marital despair, songwriting proved therapeutic. (`I wrote because I had to. Writing was the only way to voice the warring factions in my mind.’) She details some ballads’ evolutions,” wrote Bruce Sylvester on the Goldmine website. “While Waylon’s career skyrocketed as a solo and then with The Highwaymen, she didn’t mind hers cooling down since it allowed more time for family.” In 2017, the same year that she published An Outlaw and a Lady, Colter released her first album in more than a decade. The Psalms represents a return to the Christianity that had shaped her children. “Colter grapples steadily with her moving away from faith and her at first jagged and then steady return to it,” the No Depression reviewer declared. “The album [The Psalms] captures musically the journey she travels in her book. Colter’s honest and heart-full memoir gives us glimpses of a life sometimes fraught with uncertainty lived into the fullness of grace and love.”
Critics found An Outlaw and a Lady a fascinating portrait of the relationship between Jennings and Colter, but also of Colter’s faith and how it shaped her life. “For those who can’t get enough info about legendary country music Outlaw Waylon Jennings and the wild and influential life he lived,” wrote a contributor to the Saving Country Music website, “you’re about to get one of the most up close and personal accounts of Hoss.” “In the end, An Outlaw and a Lady is a fantastic book,” concluded Zachary Houle on the Festival Peak website. “I read it in a couple of sittings over the course of about three hours. It is unputdownable. It doesn’t talk down to you, or it doesn’t condescend. It just shows how having faith in God can be the bedrock you need to getting through troubled relationships. Colter’s story is joyous and inspiring, and all audiences — fans, converts to Christianity or even just casual readers — should get something out of this. Colter may be out to please everyone, but, in a sense, she’s just being herself.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 13, 2017, review of An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home, p. 66.
Rolling Stone, November 14, 2016, “Jessi Colter Announces Memoir about Life with Waylon Jennings.”
ONLINE
Boot, http://theboot.com/ (November 17, 2016), Angela Stefano, “Jessi Colter Penning Memoir about Life with Waylon Jennings.”
Festival Peak, https://festivalpeak.com/ (May 13, 2017), Zachary Houle, review of An Outlaw and a Lady.
Fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/ (March 24, 2017), Sasha Savitsky, “Faith and Fame: Jessi Colter Reflects on Faith, Husband Waylon Jennings in New Memoir.”
Goldmine, http://www.goldminemag.com/ (June 10, 2017), Bruce Sylvester, review of An Outlaw and a Lady.
Jessi Colter Website, http://www.officialjessicolter.com (November 1, 2017), author profile.
No Depression, http://nodepression.com/ (November 1, 2017). “Jessi Colter’s `An Outlaw and a Lady.'”
NPR, http://www.npr.org/ (January 12, 2017), Ann Powers, “A Beautiful Expression of Belief by Jessi Colter.”
Saving Country Music, http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/ (November 14, 2016), “Waylon’s Widow Jessi Colter to Release Memoir `An Outlaw and a Lady.’”
Jessi Colter's "An Outlaw and a Lady"
In the now-infamous country anthem of loss (whose words regrettably ring truer with each passing year) “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes,” George Jones warbles about those singers who “tear your heart out when they sing” like one in particular, “the outlaw that walks through Jesse’s dream.” Most folks have taken this line to be about Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, and if that’s so, the song reflects the ups and downs of a relationship between two people deeply in love with each other, who traveled through some rough patches but who stood at each other’s sides through the shades of darkness and the revelations of the light.
In her compulsively readable, clear-eyed, and graciously told memoir, An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home (HarperCollins), Jessi Colter (born Mirriam Rebecca Joan Johnson) generously opens her heart to reveal the scars, the hurts, the healing, and the love that she’s experienced. This is not simply a book about life with Waylon—though, of course, her years with him take up about half of the book—but this is a book about a woman reflecting on her journey through life as a daughter, a mother, a songwriter and poet, and a Christian. This is a spiritual memoir that chronicles Colter’s hard-fought battles, her regrets, and her acceptance of herself and those struggles, and, much like her songwriting, it’s a lyrically gorgeous book that wraps the rough edges of life warmly in a colorful blanket of stark beauty.
You need not travel very far into Colter’s memoir to encounter its revelatory power and to get a little taste of the journey that’s to come. In just a few sentences, Colter introduces us to the two defining aspects of her life, music and faith, as she reflects on growing up playing piano in her mother’s church. “As a child, I had first-hand evidence of God’s goodness, mercy, and grace. … And then I had something else: music. … All this music, of course, was linked to the love I was feeling in Mother’s church. She could preach, but I soon learned that I could sing. … The process of channeling music through my heart was—and remains—a natural one. It was clearly a gift … for me, beginning in childhood, music flowed like a clear mountain stream whose source, I learned from Mother, was God on high. Music would prove to be the great instrument of change in my life, the ethereal spirit that would, in one form or another, punctuate my story with one surprise after another.”
As a child, Colter’s faith grows as she listens to her mother preaching at Pentecostal churches on Sundays. Yet she admits that she had questions and was a serious thinker, often asking her mother questions related to apparent conflict between the the natural world and the spiritual realm. She experiences her first crisis of faith after her brother, Paul, dies, and she ventures into a relationship with Duane Eddy. “I prayed that the spirit imbued in my parents—the spirit that had them venturing forth into the wide-open spaces of the glorious deserts and mountains of Arizona—be imbued in me. I prayed that my life not be boring or predictable. In that sense, I’m glad to report that all my prayers came true.”
It’s also the moment that Colter emerges on the scene as a songwriter and experiences a kind of loneliness that has an impact on her writing. After telling her that he thinks she can succeed as a writer and a singer, Eddy introduces Colter to Chet Atkins, who tells her to “keep writing and sending stuff,” since he thinks he can place her songs with country artists and pop artists, too. Atkins also tells her not to “worry about category; just write what you feel.” Soon enough, Atkins has signed Dottie West to sing Colter’s “No Sign of the Living,” Hank Locklin to cut her song “I’m Blue,” and Nancy Sinatra to record “If He’d Love Me.”
As her songs begin to make their way onto records, her marriage to Eddy settles into a kind of tuneless groove. A ceaseless questioner, Colter starts to ask herself about her songwriting and her marriage. She admits that her “solace was at the piano at which, for hours on end, I’d play, sing, and compose … the good [songs] were the deep ones, the ones that emanated from the depths of my secret heart. … The biggest secret was my dissatisfaction with a marriage that never grew into anything more than a meaningful friendship.”
Six months after she and Eddy part ways, she meets Waylon Jennings. “I sensed something in this man that I couldn’t ignore. I saw him as a fellow adventurer, a man unafraid of uncharted territory, someone willing to go anywhere and do anything in pursuit of some ever-elusive truth.” Her relationship was nothing if not turbulent and steady by turns, but at its center existed a steady and intuitive trust, a sort of metaphysical “can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you.”
In 1970 Colter—who had up until then been going by her given name—recorded her first album, A Country Star is Born, and she changed her name to Jessi Colter. During this time, she’s going through turbulent times in her personal life, and one line echoes through her heart as she seeks healing: “Oh well, there’s always God.” By the mid-1970s, Colter expresses her divided soul in the making of two albums: Jessi and Mirriam. “Jessi was the wife of Waylon and the artist who had recorded two secular albums; Mirriam was the follower of Christ returning to her faith. Because I was both Jessi and Mirriam, I could not give up one for the other. All I could do was allow each one to have her say.”
Colter grapples steadily with her moving away from faith and her at first jagged and then steady return to it. She has just released a new album titled simply Psalms, which consist of her interpreting several of the Psalms that mean the most to her. “This is hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she told me, “because I live off this. I read these every day, and I want to know how to share them. What I love most about David [David of Bethlehem, the widely accepted author of the Psalms] is that he’s so human, but he has such a repentant heart. These are for people that are hungry for serenity, that long for peace.” The album captures musically the journey she travels in her book. Colter’s honest and heart-full memoir gives us glimpses of a life sometimes fraught with uncertainty lived into the fullness of grace and love.
I chatted with Jessi Colter recently about her new memoir.
Why this book now?
Jessi Colter: First of all I want to say that there’s something very supernatural in the way this book happened. I never felt a need to talk about why I took the turns I did in my life. I was partnering with Willie on a tribute to Waylon, and David Ritz was asked to write the script. He and I spent four minutes on the phone, and he said he would like to tell my story but that he wanted me to tell along the lines of my spiritual story. I realized that it would have to follow the lives of my songs in order for me to tell the emotional story of my life. David made this process so much smoother. So many dreams that I’d forgotten I had dreamed have now come true. Part of the process was going through all these photos and choosing some for the book. It was agonizing on the one hand, and very fruitful on the other. Overall, this has been very therapeutic.
This is story of your parents as well as your own story. What were your mother’s most memorable traits?
I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was what you would call today a professional woman. I was part of what she did, so I was always around her, especially at church. She always had an intuition about me, I think. She led by example; she’d always be out helping people, praying for them. As we drove up to the mines she’d be singing. She had a capacity for ministering to the spirit, but she was also down to earth; she was an incredible cook. She was natural and spiritual.
Your father’s?
My father would come and go; he was able to do it all. I remember when I was young he had one of the first [Hudson] Terraplanes. He had this pace about him. I remember his hands so well; he worked so much with his hands. I remember his gait; he had this wonderful laid-back pace. He had a very inquiring mind and a very quiet strength.
What about Waylon? What were his most memorable traits?
I was so glad I got to be with Waylon. I understood when he said that music was the other woman. He was so amazing you could never second-guess him. Sometimes it felt like we were boyfriend and girlfriend rather than husband and wife. He was so funny. In Nashville sometimes we’d just drive up and down the road at night; we’d sometimes end up at JJ’s, a famous pinball hangout, and crazy, funny things could happen. In the studio, he started cutting what became platinum albums. There were times when he wouldn’t come home, and I went a little bazooka; but then he’d come home and have this great big news about something. Waylon made life creative. I had to work out my salvation at my own pace, though. It was hard not sharing that with him; he didn’t have the experience of someone in his own life mining the Bible or being spiritual. There’s also something about music that makes you want to keep it to yourself. It was a fascinating story; we walked along with the rhythm, and he could always read when he should do something.
What’s your favorite mistake?
Part of what I would have chosen to do was not to have left my faith. I’d like that never to be on my record. I am grateful that God forgave me a lot.
What will readers be surprised to learn about you from the book?
It’s a different walk. Probably about my mother but also the depth of all those early times. There were many years that my family was not always close, but my upbringing was awesome.
What lessons would you like readers to take from your book?
Dreams do come true. God answers prayers.
Jessi Colter Announces Memoir About Life With Waylon Jennings
'An Outlaw and a Lady,' chronicling Colter's career and marriage to the country rebel, will be released in April
Jessi Colter, the widow of Waylon Jennings, will release the memoir 'An Outlaw and a Lady' in April 2017.
By Rolling Stone
November 14, 2016
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The lone female on the seminal Wanted! The Outlaws album is releasing her autobiography. Jessi Colter, singer, songwriter and the widow of Waylon Jennings, has announced An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home. The memoir will be released April 11th, 2017.
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Written with David Ritz, An Outlaw and a Lady chronicles Colter's journey from singing in church to performing alongside one of the architects of outlaw country. But Colter, fiercely independent, was never relegated to Jennings' shadow. As a solo artist, she scored a Number One country song with "I'm Not Lisa" and a Top 10 hit with "What's Happened to Blue Eyes," and established herself as an important female vocalist in country music. Later, her collaborations with her husband, specifically Wanted! The Outlaws' "Suspicious Minds," and "Storms Never Last," off their 1981 duets album Leather and Lace, made strong impressions on the charts. The latter became Colter's signature song, with the singer performing it regularly in concert, including at CMA Music Festival in 2014, where she joined her and Jennings' son Shooter Jennings onstage.
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Colter's memoir is also set to address the difficulties in her marriage to Jennings, who lived out his rebellious image with a harrowing cocaine addiction before eventually kicking the drug. He died from complications of diabetes in 2002.
Colter, who resides in Arizona, turned 73 in May and is working on a new album.
Jessi Colter Penning Memoir About Life With Waylon Jennings
By Angela Stefano November 17, 2016 12:16 PM
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Jessi Colter memoir
Frederick Breedon IV, Getty Images
Singer-songwriter and wife of the late Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter will release a memoir in 2017.
Titled An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life With Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home, Colter’s autobiography is due out on April 11, 2017, through Thomas Nelson. The artist worked with David Ritz to pen the project.
An Outlaw and a Lady will share Colter’s life story, from her time performing in church as a child to her work with her first husband, Duane Eddy; her role in the outlaw country movement of the 1970s; and her marriage to Jennings.
“Together, they made their home in Nashville, which in the 1970s was ground zero for roots music …,” explains the synopsis of An Outlaw and a Lady on Amazon. “And Jessi was at the center of it all.”
Colter’s memoir will also explore how, although she drifted away from the church for a time, her faith helped her during her marriage to Jennings. The synopsis calls An Outlaw and a Lady “a powerful story of American music, of love in the midst of heartache, and of faith that sustains.”
Colter and Jennings were married from October of 1969 until Jennings’ death in February of 2002. Together, they had a son, Shooter Jennings. Colter is now 73, living in Arizona and working on new music.
Read More: Jessi Colter Penning Memoir About Life With Waylon Jennings | http://theboot.com/jessi-colter-memoir/?trackback=tsmclip
November 14, 2016
Waylon’s Widow Jessi Colter to Release Memoir “An Outlaw and a Lady”
Trigger News 26 Comments
jessi-colter-an-outlaw-and-a-lady
Take my money.
For those who can’t get enough info about legendary country music Outlaw Waylon Jennings and the wild and influential life he lived, you’re about to get one of the most up close and personal accounts of Hoss that’s possible to put in print, while also getting to know the lady who stood by his side in sickness and health, and has plenty of her own stories and wisdom to divulge during a legendary career in country music.
Jessi Colter, the widow of Waylon Jennings, and one of the most important females in country music’s Outlaw movement of the 70’s, is readying the release of a memoir called An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home. It will be released April 11th, 2017. Written with David Ritz—whose known for his collaborative biographies with folks like Willie Nelson and Ray Charles, as well as a regular writer of album liner notes—the book is said to cover Colter’s musical career from singing in church to performing beside Waylon, Willie, and Tompall as part of the Wanted: The Outlaws phenomenon.
Along with Wanted: The Outlaws becoming the first ever platinum selling record in country music history, Jessi Colter achieved success beyond the shadow of the big male-dominated Outlaw names with her #1 hit “I’m Not Lisa,” as well as a Top 10 single with “What Happened to Blue Eyes.”
Waylon Jennings publicly struggled with cocaine addiction throughout his career, and An Outlaw and a Lady is said to tackle the tumultuous condition of their marriage at times. Colter still lives in Arizona where Waylon eventually got clean, and where he was laid to rest in 2002. The daughter of a Pentecostal evangelist and a race-car driver, the book chronicles Jessi’s return to faith, and how Waylon shared that faith with her in the latter stages of his life.
An Outlaw and a Lady is 304 pages long, and is being published by Thomas Nelson. Jessi Colter also released a Greatest Hits record in 2003 called An Outlaw…A Lady. Colter is now 73-years-old, and is also working on a new record.
Pre-Order Jessi Colter’s An Outlaw and a Lady
FAITH AND FAME
Jessi Colter reflects on faith, husband Waylon Jennings in new memoir
By Sasha Savitsky Published March 24, 2017 Fox News
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Jessi Colter opens up on faith, new album
NEW YORK – Jessi Colter has released her first album in 11 years -- and the outlaw singer has something to say. But this time, the 73-year-old has made faith the focus of her music.
The wife of the late country legend Waylon Jennings record 12 tracks, all psalms, aptly called "The Psalms."
FILE- In this Aug. 1999 file photo, country music legend Waylon Jennings poses in Nashville, Tenn. New York City-based auction house Guernseys is holding the sale of more than 2,000 of Jennings belongings online Sunday, Oct. 5, 2014, at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Jennings, who defined the outlaw movement in country music, died Feb. 13, 2002, at 64. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)Expand / Contract
AP (In this Aug. 1999 file photo, country music legend Waylon Jennings poses in Nashville, Tenn. )
"I think it was supernaturally designed for this because [guitarist Lenny Kaye and I] began the album 10 years ago," Colter told Fox News. "It just kept evolving creatively and it ended up taking close to 10 years."
Kaye, who co-wrote Jennings self-titled memoir, was inspired by Colter one night while he was visiting the couple at their home. Colter sat at her piano and played hymns in the early morning.
"I didn't think anymore about it but it struck [Kaye]," she said. "After Waylon made his crossing [in] 2002, I was visiting [our son] Shooter in New York...and [Kaye] called and said, 'Let's go into the studio and cut what we're talking about.' And I said, 'Sure.'"
The album is directly-inspired by Colter's own journey of faith which she also details in her upcoming memoir "An Outlaw and A Lady."
"They all mean something," she said of the psalms. '"If you read the psalms daily, you wouldn't need a psychiatrist or a psychic."
The "I'm Not Lisa" singer admitted her faith wavered at times.
"They call the 20s 'the trying 20s' and in my 20s, I certainly tried to leave my teaching," Colter told us. She was raised in a household "of God" but left it all behind in her 20s "and went seeking in all the wrong places."
She eventually found her way back to God, calling it "such a moment," but it was a point of contention between her and her husband.
"Waylon and I went through times where our philosophies didn't match and I adjusted to that because he was such a good man," she recalled. "[But] at the end, he agreed."
The songstress also spoke with us about her feelings on today's country artists.
"It's hard for me to say that I love anything right now," she admitted. "I do love some people in it, and I love what they're trying to do."
She added that she's "not overlooking some of the greats that are out there" but said it's "a little beyond me in some of the mediocre subjects there are artists [singing about]."
Faith & Fame is a regular column exploring how a strong belief system helps some performers navigate the pitfalls of the entertainment industry.
Follow Sasha Savitsky on Twitter @SashaFB.
You can find Sasha Savitsky on Twitter @SashaFB.
Jessi Colter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jessi Colter
Jessi Colter SXSW 2006 crop.jpg
Jessi Colter performing at the South by Southwest music festival 2006
Background information
Birth name Mirriam Johnson
Born May 25, 1943 (age 74)
Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
Genres Country, Outlaw country
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Instruments Vocals, piano
Years active 1970–present
Labels Black Country Rock Media, RCA, Capitol, Triad, Peter Pan, Shout! Factory
Associated acts Duane Eddy, Shooter Jennings, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings
Website Official Website
Mirriam Johnson, known professionally as Jessi Colter (born May 25, 1943),[1] is an American country music artist who is best known for her collaboration with her husband, country singer and songwriter Waylon Jennings, and for her 1975 country-pop crossover hit "I'm Not Lisa".
Jessi Colter was one of the few female artists to emerge from the mid-1970s "outlaw" movement.[2] After meeting her future husband, Colter pursued a career in country music, releasing her first studio LP in 1970, A Country Star Is Born. Five years later, Colter signed with Capitol Records and released her first solo single, "I'm Not Lisa," which topped the country charts and reached the top 5 on the pop charts. In 1976 she was featured on the collaboration LP Wanted: The Outlaws, which became an RIAA-certified Platinum album, and helped her become one of the few female outlaw country stars.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Music career
2.1 Early career: 1970–1974
2.2 Breakthrough success: 1975–1979
2.3 Later music career: 1980–2002
2.4 Return to music: 2006–present
3 Personal life
4 Discography
5 Awards and nominations
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Early life[edit]
Miriam Johnson was born in 1943 in Phoenix, Arizona[3] and raised in a strict Pentecostal home.[1] Her mother was a Pentecostal preacher and her father was a race-car driver. At age 11, Colter became the pianist at her church.[4] After graduating from Mesa High, Ariz. in 1961, she began singing in local clubs in Phoenix. After marrying guitarist Duane Eddy in 1961, and still using her real name of Miriam Johnson, she issued two singles that were issued on the Jamie label. The first, "Lonesome Road", received scattered airplay in several US markets, though not enough to make any national charts. After a second single failed to even get regional airplay, Johnson did not record again for nearly a decade. She continued to tour with Eddy until divorcing in 1968. The following year, she met country artist Waylon Jennings who helped her secure a recording contract with RCA Victor.
Music career[edit]
Early career: 1970–1974[edit]
Johnson, now billing herself as "Jessi Colter", resumed her recording career in 1970. That year, Waylon Jennings and Colter sang duet on two top 40 country chart hits. On March 25, 1970 she played keyboard for her husband during his appearance on The Johnny Cash Show. She released her debut album, A Country Star is Born, on RCA, with Jennings and Chet Atkins co-producing [1] The album was not successful and did not make an impact on the country music market. It was Colter's only album for RCA, and she left the label soon after. However, her face appears on several Jennings record covers from this period.
Breakthrough success: 1975–1979[edit]
In 1975, Colter was signed with Capitol Records. On the label, she released her debut single, "I'm Not Lisa." [5] The song was Colter's breakthrough single, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Country Chart and also peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Pop Chart, becoming a crossover hit in 1975. Her second album, titled I'm Jessi Colter was also released that year and debuted at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and No. 50 on the Billboard 200.[1] The follow-up single from her album "What's Happened to Blue Eyes" was also very successful,[6] peaking at No. 5 on the Billboard Country Chart and No. 57 on the Pop Chart. The single's B-side, "You Ain't Never Been Loved (Like I'm Gonna Love You)," charted among the Top Pop 100 also in 1975. Colter couldn't follow-up her success on the Pop Charts; she was not able to chart among the Pop Top 40. That year, Colter launched her own nationwide tour at the Los Angeles Civic Center. In 1976 Colter released her second and third Capitol studio albums, Jessi and Diamond in the Rough. Both albums were as successful as Colter's 1975 album,[1] both debuting at No. 4 on the Top Country Albums chart. The lead single from her Jessi album, "It's Morning (And I Still Love You)" was a Top 15 country hit in 1976. Her second album that year, Diamond in the Rough produced only one charting single,"I Thought I Heard You Calling My Name."[1] For the remainder of the decade, Colter toured with her husband, Waylon Jennings, and released her studio album Mirriam in 1977. She then released her next album, That's the Way a Cowboy Rocks and Rolls the following year.[1] Her success began to decline through the remainder of the decade, with her final two albums of the decade not producing any Top 40 country hits.
Later music career: 1980–2002[edit]
In 1981, Colter and her husband returned to release a duet album entitled Leather and Lace.[1] The album's first single, "Storms Never Last," was written by Colter,[6] and the second single, "The Wild Side of Life"/"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," was also a major hit in 1981,[1] peaking at No. 10 on the Billboard Country Chart. The album was certified Gold in sales by the RIAA that year, Colter's second RIAA-certified album to date.[7] Stevie Nicks wrote the title track of the album; however, after receiving word that Colter and Jennings might divorce, Nicks released her own version of the song as a duet with Don Henley. It peaked at No. 6 on Pop chart, also in 1981. Also in 1981 Colter released her final studio album on Capitol records, Ridin' Shotgun, which also spawned Colter's last charting single on the country charts, "Holdin' on."
As the decade progressed, Colter's success began to decline. She released an album in 1984 on the Triad label titled Rock and Roll Lullaby, produced by Chips Moman.[1] However, in the later years of the decade, she decided to let her recording career decline in order to help take care of and nurse her husband through his drug abuse and various medical problems. She remained active during this time.[8]
In the early 1990s, she focused her attention on performing and released an album of children's music titled Jessi Colter Sings Just for Kids: Songs from Around the World in early 1996. It featured a guest appearance by Jennings, who recited some of his poetry for the video.[1] In 2000, Colter performed on Jennings's live album Never Say Die, released two years before his death in 2002, at age 64.[8]
Return to music: 2006–present[edit]
In 2006, Colter returned to recording with a new studio album released on the Shout! Factory label, Out of the Ashes.[1] "Out of the Ashes" was Colter's first studio album in over 20 years. The album was produced by Don Was and reflected on Jennings' death. Jennings had an unused vocal, "Out of the Rain," which was featured on the track.
The album was given many positive reviews, including Allmusic, which gave the album four out of five stars in 2006.[9] Out of the Ashes was her first album since 1981 to chart on the Top Country Albums chart, peaking at No. 61.[10] In 2007 Colter recorded a duet version of her 1975 hit "I'm Not Lisa" with Deana Carter on her 2007 album, The Chain. [11] In 2017, Colter and Jan Howard provided guest vocals to a track appearing on Written In Song, an album by Jeannie Seely. The song, called "We're Still Hangin' In There Ain't We Jessi", references how Seely and Colter are seemingly two of the only women in country music who managed to have a successful marriage.
Colter's first album in eleven years, The Psalms was released on March 24 via Legacy Recordings. The album consisted of Colter's favourite Book of Psalms passages put to music and was produced by Lenny Kaye, who recalled an evening when he, Colter, Jennings and Patti Smith were having dinner together in 1995 when Colter began to sing passages of the Bible. Kaye stated that he was "transfixed" and kept the evening in his mind until he convinced Colter to record those renditions in 2007, with the album being recorded over the course of two sessions, along with a further two in 2008. Of the album, Kate stated that "we tried to choose songs that weren't about warring peoples but more about comfort and reconciliation".[12] On April 11, 2017, Colter released a tell-all memoir titled "An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home".[13]
Personal life[edit]
Colter met Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Duane Eddy in Phoenix. He produced her first record, and she toured with him. They were married in 1962, in Las Vegas, settling in Los Angeles. She pursued a career as a songwriter under her married name, Mirriam Eddy. Her songs were recorded by Don Gibson, Nancy Sinatra, and Dottie West.[1] Colter and Eddy have a daughter, Jennifer. In 1968, Eddy and Colter separated, divorcing later that year. Colter moved back to Arizona.
In 1969 she met and married Waylon Jennings.[6] At this time, Colter adopted her stage name, Jessi Colter, in honor of her great grandfather, Jesse Colter.[citation needed] Colter then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, with Jennings. Colter and Jennings had one son, Waylon Albright "Shooter" Jennings (born May 19, 1979). In the early 1980s, Colter and Jennings nearly divorced due to his addiction to drugs and other forms of substance abuse.[8] However, they remained together until Jennings's death in 2002.
Discography[edit]
Jessi Colter is one of modern music's singular talents, a singer,
songwriter, and entertainer whose influence continues to echo across
musical genres.
An artist talented and versatile enough both to top the pop charts and to be part of the groundbreaking Wanted: The Outlaws album, she is assured a place in the history of both formats. With the release in 2003 of An Outlaw ...A Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter--which No Depression called "one of the more important and plain necessary releases of the year"-and the 2006 release of “Out of the Ashes” -her legacy has been showcased again both for those who were part of the magic as it happened and for a new generation.
Jessi Colter was born with the name Mirriam Johnson in Phoenix. (She adopted the stage name Jessi Colter after her great-great-great uncle who was in Jesse James' notorious outlaw gang.) Her mother became Sister Helen, an ordained Pentecostal minister, and Colter became the church pianist at age 11. As a teen, her musical talent
impressed rockabilly guitar star Duane Eddy, who produced her 1961 single "Lonesome Road." They married in 1963. He wrote and recorded an instrumental, "Mirriam", while she wrote some of his album tracks, as well as "No Sign of the Living" for Dottie West. In 1967, Eddy and Colter recorded a duet single, "Guitar on My Mind," but divorced the following year. She married Waylon Jennings on Oct. 26, 1969, at her mother's church.
In 1975, Colter notched a sizable country and pop hit with the self-penned "I'm Not Lisa." That was followed a year later by the success of Wanted! The Outlaws, a collaboration with Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser and the first Nashville album to sell a million copies. Her best-known duets with Jennings are "Suspicious Minds" and her soothing composition "Storms Never Last."
Her re-emergence as a recording and concert artist, bodes well for the future of popular music when it can surely use someone of her vision, originality, and accomplishment.
all songs considered
MUSIC YOU'LL FALL IN LOVE WITH
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A Beautiful Expression Of Belief By Jessi Colter
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January 12, 201711:48 AM ET
Ann Powers
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Jessi Colter's new album 'The Psalms'
Courtesy of the Artist
Country music luminary Jessi Colter has only released one album since the 2002 passing of her husband, Waylon Jennings, the Don Was-produced Out of the Ashes, which came out in 2006. Now a second one is due. The Psalms is a labor of love for Colter's current main collaborator, Lenny Kaye, the guitarist and cultural polymath who's best known for his lifelong musical partnership with Patti Smith. It's coming out March 24 on Legacy Recordings.
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Jessi Colter.
David McClister/Courtesy of the Artist
Colter grew up singing holy songs in a Christian Pentecostal home where the sacred defined daily life in the presence of the secular; her mother was a preacher, but her dad built and drove race cars. Kaye grew up loving the minor key of Jewish cantorial music, but also had an uncle who wrote the lyrics to the love theme from The Godfather. Kaye met Colter in the mid-1990s, while co-writing the memoir of her late husband, Waylon Jennings. Walking into the couple's living room, he found her devising piano melodies for psalms she'd randomly select from her Bible. He was seized by her spirit immediately.
"It was one of the most beautiful expressions of belief I've ever witnessed," Kaye writes in the liner notes for The Psalms. Kaye couldn't forget Colter's pure improvisations, which were grounded in a lifetime of taking King David's verses to heart. In 2007, he recorded Colter's versions of some of those psalms, sometimes playing guitar as she sat at the keyboard. Kay and Colter didn't rehearse, instead letting themselves be guided by fate and their own feelings in the moment. Kaye spent the next decade augmenting those spare sessions with contributions from a stellar ensemble, including unmatchable talents like the drummer Bobby Previte and the keyboardist Al Kooper. The resulting album is unique: as personal as a mother's morning song, as hauntingly resonant as an ancient invocation.
One of the saddest aspects of the tensions surrounding religion in America today is the way dogmatism dims the power of sacred texts. When hostility reigns, one person's Good News becomes another's sentence of imprisonment; holy recitations sound, to some, like angry tirades. How can we reclaim what's universal within language that so many perceive as exclusionary? It's a conundrum. If prayer is translation, as the holy humanist Leonard Cohen once wrote, a profound connection is lost when people stop being able to hear each other's ways of praying.
The Psalms offers listeners the sound of one woman's praise and supplications — and not just any woman, but one of country's most distinctive vocalists. "Psalm 136: Mercy and Loving Kindness," with its lilting lullaby of a melody, is a beautiful refrain that welcomes this work into the world. We're honored to premiere it here. There won't be another album like The Psalms in 2017: Today, religious music is rarely this unadorned, or this powerfully designed to open a space that welcomes even those who don't know the codes and commandments behind it. "With music, we traverse the gap between language and the miracle that is existence," Kaye writes in his liner notes. Perhaps this modest, powerfully intentional project will help heal other divides as well.
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An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life
with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me
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Publishers Weekly.
264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p66.
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Full Text:
An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home
Jessi Colter, with David Ritz. Thomas Nelson, $26.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7180-8297-0
Colter's often touching memoir is a fast-paced chronicle of her life, loves, and Christian faith. Colter gained fame as the
wife of hard-drinking, wild-living country music outlaw Waylon Jennings, but music flowed in her life long before she
met him. Born the sixth child of a car repairman father and a preacher mother, Colter learned to love music very early,
writing melodies on an upright piano in her mother's church. Eventually she met and married rock guitarist Duane
Eddy, who took her to Nashville to meet musician Chet Atkins. He got her songs recorded by country artists such as
Dottie West and pop singers such as Nancy Sinatra. After her divorce from Eddy, life moved quickly: she married
Jennings, changed her name to Jessi Colter, and released her first album. Over the years she and Jennings endured ups
and downs, surrounded by friends such as Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson,; throughout, her
Christian faith sustained her. Colter's moving memoir fits nicely beside Jennings's own memoir (Waylon: An
Autobiography) and Terry Jennings's recollections of his father, Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith That Brought Me Home." Publishers
Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 66. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
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Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
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Waylon Jennings’ widow Jessi Colter revisits their years together in her new autobiography.
Posted in American Back Roads | Tags: Al Kooper, Alison Krauss, Chris Stapleton, David Ritz, dick clark, duane eddy, Eric Church, Jamie Records, Jessi Colter, John Jackson, Kris Kristofferson, Lenny Kaye, Robbie Turner, Ryan Bingham, Shooter Jennings, Sturgill Simpson, The Highwaymen, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson
June 10, 2017 | Bruce Sylvester
by Bruce Sylvester
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O
June 15 marks the eightieth anniversary of country outlaw Waylon Jennings’ birth. Though he left this world in 2002, his legend and influence remain strong – recently in a 22-song CD/DVD “Outlaw: Celebrating The Music Of Waylon Jennings” (Legacy) and his widow Jessi Colter’s open-hearted and candid autobiography “An Outlaw And A Lady (Thomas Nelson/HarperCollins) co-authored with David Ritz. It’s a fast read and very perceptive. Plus she has a new devotional CD, “Psalms” (also on Legacy).
The tribute includes Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson (the survivors among The Highwaymen) plus younger generations’ Chris Stapleton, Ryan Bingham, Sturgill Simpson, and others covering Jennings standards like “Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line” and “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way.” Jamey Johnson approaches the mix of strength, tenderness and vulnerability that made Waylon’s original “Freedom To Stay” so powerful on his groundbreaking 1973 LP “Lonesome, On’ry And Mean” (whose title track Eric Church tears through here). Dueting with Johnson, Alison Krauss sings blue-eyed soul – as Jessi could — on Jessi’s composition “I Ain’t The One.” Jessi herself solos on piano on “Mona” – which she wrote for her husband – while their son Shooter Jennings delivers “Whistlers And Jugglers.” The DVD’s camera often rightly focuses on Waylon’s long-time steel guitar whiz Robbie Turner (whose parents played in a young Hank Williams’s band).
In some ways, Waylon and Jessi (his fourth wife) were meant for each other. In other ways, they were polar opposites. He was dubious about spiritual matters until near his life’s end, whereas her autobiography often speaks of her closeness to God stemming from her Arizona childhood with a race-car-driving dad and a pentecostal preacher mother who open-mindedly let her seven kids read whatever they wanted. Born in 1943, young Mirriam Rebecca Joan Johnson (the stage name Jessi Colter came later) loved Poe’s poetry. As for music, she forthrightly acknowledges liking Johnnie Ray (the ’50s’ prince of wails) more than Hank Williams.
At 17, she met twangy guitar slinger Duane Eddy, who recognized her singing and songwriting talents, fell in love with her and brought her to the attention of “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark (who had a financial interest in Eddy’s label, Jamie). She thought highly of Eddy but says she was too young to have ever experienced romantic love. She wed him anyhow, winding up with “a marriage that never grew into anything more than a meaningful friendship.” Her first 45 single (done as Mirriam Johnson) appeared on Jamie. Clark “plugged my records shamelessly.”
Eddy, five years her senior, introduced her to Ayn Rand’s writings, classical music and up-and-coming Waylon Jennings. “I was deeply interested but also deeply apprehensive. The more people in Phoenix talked about Waylon, the more incorrigible he appeared. It wasn’t only the long list of women he had supposedly seduced (or had seduced him), it was also his reputation for being high on high-potency pep pills. And yet … I sensed something in this man I couldn’t ignore. I saw him as a fellow adventurer, a man unafraid of uncharted territory, a man willing to go anywhere and do anything in pursuit of some ever-elusive truth.” She speculates that “his main motivation for pill-popping was simply to stay up. … Life excited him so much that he didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to miss a thing.”
After a divorce from Eddy, they were wed in Las Vegas on Oct. 26, 1969, in a perfunctory ceremony performed by a bored justice of the peace. “I was nervous and scared and convinced that this was either the best day of my life or the worst.”
During moments of marital despair, songwriting proved therapeutic. (“I wrote because I had to. Writing was the only way to voice the warring factions in my mind.”) She details some ballads’ evolutions. While Waylon’s career skyrocketed as a solo and then with The Highwaymen, she didn’t mind hers cooling down since it allowed more time for family.
Her husband’s unique sense of humor emerges in her book. Her embarrassed take on the Cadillac-buying legend is different from his. When a minister once asked what he believed, Waylon replied, “Yeah.”
While she was raised in the warmth of faith in a loving God, she suspects that he reacted against the severity of sermons he’d heard as a child and that childhood poverty left him unable to feel worthy of God’s love.
Incidentally, in the 1990s, while helping with the writing of “Waylon: The Autobiography” guitarist Lenny Kaye overheard Jessi playing piano and singing psalms to herself. A decade later, he got her into a studio to tape some as he played backup. Over another decade, Kaye added discreet overdubs including Al Kooper on keyboards and more and John Jackson on mandolin and fiddle. The result is her new 12-track CD “Psalms.”
The disc reflects a discussion Jessi recalls in her book. When Waylon remarked, “I’m not sure the exploring stops until the day we die,” she replied, “Which may be the day that the real exploring just begins.”
Maybe a key to their relationship was that she gave him the freedom to stay.
Zachary HouleFollow
Book critic, Fiction author, Poet, Writer, Editor. Follow me on Twitter @zachary_houle.
May 13
Jessi Colter
A Review of Jessi Colter’s “An Outlaw and a Lady”
God and Music
“An Outlaw and a Lady” Book Cover
My knowledge of the country music of Jessi Colter is limited to the White Mansions album she made with her husband, Waylon Jennings, and a host of others in the late ’70s. My dad bought it when it came out and bequeathed it to me later in life as an adult, but it is, alas, a bit unplayable as it skips. (However, the cover art of Civil War-era artifacts is amazing and lavish.) Similarly, I know next to nothing about Jennings’ work. That all said, I’m game for a good memoir, always, especially if it expands upon what I know about music. But, as added bonus points, Colter’s memoir is just as much about faith in God as it is about music.
You see, Colter was one who didn’t totally relish the spotlight. Even though reporters in later years would ask her what happened to her career, which really flourished only around the mid-‘70s as one of the few female faces in Outlaw country music, a subgenre that was branded for bad boys (and the odd girl) who were nonconformists of the era, she would often respond that her role was just as much to support her husband and children. So Colter didn’t have as much of a music career as she could have, but it turns out her life was just as adventurous on the sidelines as it was in fame’s glare.
The reason, of course, is that she was married to Jennings. Despite the fact that he had problems with substance abuse and a wandering eye, and Colter had pretty much rediscovered God during her music career heyday after a period where she had abandoned the faith for the objectivism of Ayn Rand (shocker!), this book shows that her commitment to her husband was perhaps the very thing that saved his life in the long run. Without her, it’s unlikely that Jennings would have found the willpower to get off drugs and otherwise turn his life around, and, in his final days, find God himself.
An Outlaw and a Lady is kind of like a love letter: a love letter from Colter to Jennings, but also one of her to music, and her to God. That it works on all three counts is a testament to Colter and her fellow writer, David Ritz, who have fashioned a linear, mostly chronological and impassioned story of life well lived. Part of the reason why it works so well is not so much the writing, but the message. Colter isn’t a preacher. She is a Christian, after all, and this book was published by a Christian publisher, but at no point does Colter force the issue upon the reader. She doesn’t say that her brand of Christianity is right and correct, and she doesn’t coerce the reader to conform to it like many books of this nature are wont to do.
Instead, Colter talks about her passion for God and Jesus as though she were talking about some casual, like the weather. It just simply exists in her life, and is part of her, but she doesn’t talk down to the reader or try to convince them that Christianity is the way to go. It’s more woven into the narrative in terms of how it impacted her music and relationships. For that, this book will be easy to digest for a secular audience, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything here for those looking for something more spiritual. That Colter and her writing partner were able to pull this tightrope act off is remarkable, and easily turns An Outlaw and a Lady into a five-star read.
What’s particularly amazing is that Colter has a pretty clear memory (and is first to admit where her memories are fuzzy) as she remembers specific things she and Jennings said to each other during their courtship and 33-year-old marriage. And I don’t think any stones are left unturned — even Jennings’ 1978 drug bust is brought up. That brings life and vitality to this memoir. What’s also appealing is that, while there are embarrassing stories to be told, Colter has an appealing, relaxed style of storytelling that is respectful. She doesn’t put down her first husband, Duane Eddy, though that’s probably because he’s still alive (and he can sue for libel), despite not being necessarily in love with him. With this memoir, there’s a bit of a “tell all” feel to it, but never do you get the sense that Colter is burning any bridges. That, too, is a very hard thing to pull off. (Though, come to think of it, perhaps her most scathing and honest stories are reserved for those who are dead — and again, thus, cannot sue for libel.)
It’s interesting that, at the end of the book, Colter talks about being a widow for some 15 years now (Jennings died in 2002) and the fact that she’s ready for love again. It’s strange because Jennings casts such a wide shadow over her life that it’s tough to imagine that she would find a love as consuming as that was. (It’s pretty much the same deal with Johnny and June Carter Cash; once June was gone, Johnny pretty much lost the will to live.) That’s another key strength of this book. You really do get a sense that while Colter didn’t approve of Jennings transgressions, she loved him enough to be patient and wait while he eventually came around and changed his ways. You can sense, even though the pair briefly separated in the mid-‘70s, that this was a love meant for the ages, and how that love and all of its troubles manifested themselves in song.
This book is not only a fascinating look into the creative process, along with some tasty tabloid-y style gossip that’ll keep your eyes glued to the page, but also how faith kept Colter grounded. All three aspects are worthy of the price of admission, and I loved the fly-on-the-wall feel of the book and some of its attendant humor. For instance, there’s a great bit about how, on the day she gave birth to her son with Jennings, nicknamed Shooter (which is now his professional stage name as a musician himself), she was in the delivery room when a nurse walked in and was all excited by the fact that Johnny Cash was in the waiting room. Eventually, Colter had to tell people in the room to give this nurse a dime to call someone who cared about the fact that Cash was there, just to get on with the process of giving birth!
In the end, An Outlaw and a Lady is a fantastic book. I read it in a couple of sittings over the course of about three hours. It is unputdownable. It doesn’t talk down to you, or it doesn’t condescend. It just shows how having faith in God can be the bedrock you need to getting through troubled relationships. Colter’s story is joyous and inspiring, and all audiences — fans, converts to Christianity or even just casual readers — should get something out of this. Colter may be out to please everyone, but, in a sense, she’s just being herself, which is what makes this story of faith lost and found and love lost and found so powerful and dramatic. Really give this one a read. It is a must, whether you’re a fan of Colter’s music (or country music) or not.
Jessi Colter’s An Outlaw and a Lady: A Memoir of Music, Life with Waylon, and the Faith that Brought Me Home was published by Thomas Nelson on April 11, 2017.
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