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Mirriam Johnson (born May 25, 1943), known professionally as Jessi Colter, is an American country music singer who is best known for her collaborations with her second husband, country musician Waylon Jennings, and for her 1975 country hit "I'm Not Lisa".
Colter was one of the few female artists to emerge from the mid-1970s "outlaw country" movement. Allmusic. retrieved 8-8-08. After meeting Jennings, 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 "I'm Not Lisa", which topped the country charts and reached the top five on the pop charts. In 1976, she was featured on the collaboration LP Wanted: The Outlaws, which became an RIAA-certified platinum album.
A survey of industry sources reveals that Capitol was releasing both "You Ain't Never Been Loved" and "What's Happened to Blue Eyes" as simultaneous singles for the pop and country markets. The confusion in marketing was made evident when programmers were uncertain of which single to play. Both sides of the same record scored on the Pop Top 100, but "What's Happened to Blue Eyes" powered into the Country Top 5. Capitol clearly recognized that a miscalculation had occurred and subsequently purchased full-page industry ads saying, "We've FLIPPED. What's Happened to Blue Eyes IS the single." It was too little, too late. With two competing singles marketed to radio, Capitol's risky move made certain that Colter would not naturally follow up the success of 'I'm Not Lisa' in the Pop Top 40.
The second single was nevertheless a huge country/pop success, and later that year, Colter launched a nationwide tour as part of Waylon Jennings' program at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. 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, 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 on the country charts. Her second album that year, Diamond in the Rough produced only one charting single, "I Thought I Heard You Calling My Name". At this point, Colter had established herself as a big-selling "albums artist," rather than a casual honky-tonk hitmaker, given that her talents were far more inclined to soul-rock than to mundane country music. 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. 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.
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. In the later years of the decade, though, she decided to let her recording career decline to help take care of and nurse her husband through his drug abuse and various medical problems. She remained active during this time.
In the early 1990s, she focused her attention on performing and released an album of children's music titled in early 1996. It featured a guest appearance by Jennings, who recited some of his poetry for the video. In 2000, Colter performed on Jennings's live album Never Say Die, released two years before his death in 2002, at age 64.
The album was given many positive reviews, including Allmusic, which gave the album four out of five stars in 2006., AllMusic Out of the Ashes was her first album since 1981 to chart on the Top Country Albums chart, peaking at No. 61. In 2007 Colter recorded a duet version of her 1975 hit "I'm Not Lisa" with Deana Carter on her 2007 album, The Chain. Deana Carter's New CD Due October 9 Country Music Television: Jessi Colter news & updates 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 11 years, The Psalms, was released on March 24, 2017, by Legacy Recordings. The album consisted of Colter's favorite Book of Psalms passages put to music; it was produced by Lenny Kaye, who recalled an evening when Colter, Jennings, Patti Smith, and he 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, Kaye stated, "we tried to choose songs that weren't about warring peoples, but more about comfort and reconciliation". 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.
Her 12th solo album, Edge of Forever, was released on October 27, 2023. It was produced by Margo Price and mixed by Colter's son Shooter Jennings.
Colter announced on June 19, 2023, on her social media pages that she had married Arlin Brower in Rio Verde, Arizona, on February 14, 2023. Colter and Brower were married on a horse-therapy ranch. Arlin Brower is a former heavy equipment contractor and a horse breeder.
| 1970 | Grammy Awards | Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal | Suspicious Minds (with Waylon Jennings) | |
| 1975 | Academy of Country Music Awards | Song of the Year | I'm Not Lisa | |
| Country Music Association Awards | Female Vocalist of the Year | Jessi Colter | ||
| Song of the Year | I'm Not Lisa | |||
| Single of the Year | ||||
| 1976 | Album of the Year | Wanted! The Outlaws (with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser) | ||
| Academy of Country Music Awards | Album of the Year | |||
| Grammy Awards | Best Female Country Vocal Performance | I'm Not Lisa | ||
| Best Country Song | ||||
| 1981 | Country Music Association Awards | Vocal Duo of the Year | Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter | |
| 2007 | Grammy Awards | Grammy Hall of Fame Award | Wanted! The Outlaws (with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser) |
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