INTERLUDE: Jessi Colter and Fellow Artists Geared-Up for Release of New Waylon Jennings Tribute Album, 'The Music Inside'

Before we return to the ongoing Jessi Colter blog-bio, now is the ideal time to let fans know that the Jessi & Shooter-spearheaded album 'The Music Inside' is due for digital release in late January and for wide release through various outlets on February 7, 2012. This set constitutes the second volume in an ambitious and superb Waylon Jennings tribute effort launched last year with Volume I. Produced by Scattertunes creator Witt Stewart, the project in each of its phases has brought together some of the best established and up-and-coming artists in the industry, all of whom prove passionate about honoring the late, great Waylon through powerfully personal interpretations of his biggest hits and favorite songs. From Mongomery Gentry, Hank Williams Jr., Alabama, Josh Thompson, Jewel, Dierks Bentley, Sunny Sweeney, and, of course, Jessi Colter and Shooter Jennings, the two collections form an astonishing and cohesive whole in terms of paying top-flight musical homage to Waylon. The new album can be preordered at Amazon, and those who wish to know more about the genesis of this groundbreaking effort are encouraged to follow this link to read about the very special involvement of Jessi and Shooter.

    Jessi, in particular, offers some tantalizing insights into the reasons she included her original song, 'Mama' on the newest recording. As many of her fans know, 'Mama' was one of the stunning tracks on Jessi's classic 1977 Capitol album, Mirriam. Perhaps one of the most criminally under-appreciated albums of the 1970s, Mirriam was Jessi's "new wine" after the massive successes of 1975 and 1976, a striking exploration of her spiritual roots, featuring ten hauntingly beautiful songs written and sung in the signature Jessi Colter style. In many ways, the record was a shimmering pinnacle, a piece of transcendent artistry for Jessi, but the label fought her tooth and nail on the project and, when it was released, Capitol did not even remotely give it the support that a work of such exquisite caliber (and a star of Colter's considerable stature, at the time) deserved. Ken Mansfield talked a bit about this in my recent discussion with him, and Waylon also spoke about his disappointment on Jessi's behalf, indicating that 'Mama' was one of his favorite songs. Jessi has broached the subject a couple of times and this interview (related to the release of the first tribute set) sheds significant new light on her own feelings about the Mirriam album. As someone who still considers Mirriam to be a masterpiece, a great and groundbreaking album that was also wonderfully ahead of its time, I can't wait to hear (and purchase) the new collection featuring Jessi's updated rendition of 'Mama' and all of the other stars shining bright in honor of Old Hoss.

SINGING FOR DUANE AND JAMIE: Jessi-Blog Bio Continues ... With Memory Lane Musical Accompaniment

When last we left the blog's ongoing biography of the great and beautiful Jessi Colter, we were pondering the origins of precious little Mirriam Johnson of Mesa, Arizona, and her potential range of influences as a budding prodigy ... playing piano and singing in her mother's evangelical church. A soulfully satisfying stew of marrow-melting Gospel, blues, Western country, and (unquestionably) late '50s/early '60s pop, jazz, and rock were crucial to her early musical development, both as a singer and songwriter. Arizona was and remains a state boasting a wide-range of opportunities to nurture talent at the grass-roots level. Performing at local Western dances, talent shows, and even on the long-running local Lew King TV and radio programs provided outlets for the petite Mirriam's powerful and plaintive song-delivery. By the time she met rocker Duane Eddy through her sister, Sharon's, husband ("Cowboy" Jack Clement) in 1961, it was clear that Mirriam was well on her way to a musical career of some significance.

Eddy certainly saw the potential for both romance and star quality in Mirriam while she was still in her late teens, and backed-up his vision by producing her first sides for the Jamie label. The chesnut pop-rocker Lonesome Road was Mirriam's first foray into solo recording in 1961. The production (Duane at the helm) is tight, smart, but garden-variety early-'60s girl-singer stuff. Understandably, there might have been a temptation to mold Mirriam into the piping"Little Miss Firecracker" Brenda Lee milieu, with perhaps a dash of spicy Teresa Brewer thrown-in for good measure. Though Mirriam's version of Lonesome Road is not really remarkable in terms of arrangement, it is a stunner in the studio performance category. The unrestrained power of Jessi Colter's "teen voice" is not only intriguing when compared with her far more nuanced 1970s stylings, it is already showing signs of distinction. The unique timing is all her own, as is the underlying "Tell it like it is, girl!" Pentecostal hitch in her delivery. When she wraps her pipes around the lyric, "Look up, look up, and meet your Maker, when Gabriel blows his horn," this young woman's voice is under-girded and infused with an almost black church-choir soulfulness. There is a straightforward ache, there -- one that can't be an affectation, but which is rather the result of years of "living" with the power and panorama of Gospel music and its deep wellspring of tradition and potency.

The Lonesome Road single is a good single simply because Mirriam Johnson is singing her heart out, and one is not wrong to wonder if this particular choice of material (religion cloaked in pop-rock) was selected to soothe potential concerns of Mama Helen about her daughter's foray into the uncharted territory of the music industry.  Whatever the case may be, it was not a successful single for Mirriam, even though her performance and her drop-dead gorgeous "look" can hardly be faulted. As Jessi herself was to opine later on in her career, disc jockeys may have simply found the name "Mirriam Johnson" to be unsuited to the roster of snappy pop/rock monikers they were used to spinning. Though the Johnson surname speaks for itself in terms of anonymous American sturdiness, "Mirriam" is a name steeped with Biblical import -- attached not only to an Old Testament prophetess, the revered sister of Moses who played the tympanum and led the delivered women of Israel in song, but it was a derivative of the name of the Mother of Jesus herself. Though the name "Mirriam" would be revisited in a powerful-yet-tender (and public) manner by Jessi Colter after stardom descended upon her in the mid-1970s, a name that was essentially "Mary Johnson" was perhaps too pedestrian when it came to helping this exceptionally talented lady gain her initial foothold in the business.

Mirriam was not exactly daunted, however. Under Eddy's production auspices, she continued to record sides for Jamie. Two of those 1961 cuts, I Cried Long Enough and Making Believe, are currently featured on YouTube for the listening enjoyment of Jessi fans. The former song is one of her original compositions and tantalizes us with a very early glimpse of this woman's ability to craft declarative, compelling lyrics with intriguing chord changes and then sing her own material with a maturity and evolving style that belied her youth. Her more gentle interpretative powers were in full swing on the Making Believe standard, but it is her original song that shines most. Give the song a listen and then link to the B-side via YouTube.

The tracks Mirriam recorded during this period also underscore the fact that she was undeniably a pop singer with rock, country, and even a few jazz flourishes appearing only at the outskirts of her style. Again, the listener is almost stunned by the raw power of Mirriam's "teen rocker" vocals when compared to her more mature and stylistically evocative sound of the 1970s. In 1961, Mirriam Johnson's bell-clear soprano has all the power and gusto of Dolly Parton at full-throttle, without Dolly's charming hint of helium, without the belovedly persistent whine. 1961 Mirriam displays little tremolo and closes a lyrical bar with as much solidity and fullness as she employs at the beginning of the bar. 1975-1981 Jessi Colter, on the other hand, exerts power only when the emotion of the lyric demands, and then allows her increasingly tremulous delivery to trail off and flutter at the end of a lyric, vulnerable and bittersweet. Though there may have been a few instances when the 1970s/1980s Jessi Colter was perhaps vocally uncomfortable with certain material, or when she was perhaps even afraid of the raw power of her own voice, there can be no mistake that her souful evolution as a singer was already beginning in the early 1960s. This signature talent would eventually lead one Billboard industry reviewer to describe Jessi Colter as "one of the top five song stylists in Nashville" in 1978.

(MORE BIO TO COME ...)