100 Greatest Women#80
Jessi Colter
The original female outlaw.
Jessi Colter has been immortalized as the only female on the legendary country album Wanted: The Outlaws, where she shared billing with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and hubby Waylon Jennings. But long before that – many years and a husband before that – she had established herself as a songwriting force to be reckoned with.
Jessi was raised in a musical church-going family, and she got her first big break in the music industry when she met and married rock legend Duane Eddy. She spent many years trying to get her foot in the door as a singer, recording for independent labels with little success, but she thrived as a songwriter. Artists as diverse as Don Gibson and Nancy Sinatra cut her songs, and Dottie West actually charted with one of them (“No Sign of Living.”)
However, it was her second marriage to Waylon Jennings, shortly after her divorce from Eddy, that helped her find her voice as an artist. Jennings became not only her life partner, but her singing partner as well. She scored her first hit when they collaborated on a cover of the Elvis Presley hit “Suspicious Minds.”
It was in 1975 that she finally had a hit on her own, and it was a biggie. “I’m Not Lisa” is a classic record, one that aptly captures the pain of dating someone who hasn’t gotten over the one who came before you. It was a #1 hit, and earned her a Grammy nomination. A few other hits followed, and she established herself as an albums artists, having three top five solo albums in only two years.
Her participation in Wanted: The Outlaws, which was essentially a compilation album with a really cool concept, earned her a CMA award for Album of the Year. Colter’s career cooled down a bit after that, but she was back with a vengeance in 1981, when she released a duet album with Jennings titled Leather and Lace. One of the hits from that album, “Storms Never Last”, had been released by Colter a few years earlier. That performance remains a living testament to the love Jennings and Colter shared.
Colter spent most of the eighties and some of the nineties touring with Jennings, but when he started to fall ill, she retreated from the public eye to take care of him. After his passing, she went back into the studio, releasing the wonderful Out of the Ashes in 2006. Today, she continues to write and record, with an album produced by her son, Shooter Jennings, now in the works.
Jessi Colter
Essential Singles
- “Suspicious Minds” (with Waylon Jennings), 1970
- “I’m Not Lisa”, 1975
- “What’s Happened to Blue Eyes”, 1975
- “Storms Never Last” (with Waylon Jennings), 1981
- “You’re Still New to Me” (with Paul Davis). 1986
Essential Albums
- I’m Jessi Colter (1975)
- Jessi (1976)
- Diamond in the Rough (1976)
- Leather and Lace (with Waylon Jennings (1981)
Industry Awards
- CMA Album of the Year – Wanted: The Outlaws, 1976
I’m not sure I regard Jessie Colter as all that important – certainly her relative inactivity as a recording artist argues that you may have her too highly ranked
Only her voice is more beautiful than her face. What a great lady. Wish she would do a concert some where in Arizona