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 ...)

JESSI COLTER: The Biographical Essentials (PART ONE)

The woman who would become known to the world of pop, country, rock, and American roots music as "Jessi Colter" entered the world on May 25, 1947 (or 1943, according to sources we dismiss due to Jessi's seemingly eternal youth and sexiness) as Mirriam Johnson, the sixth child of seven children born to Helen Johnson of the Mesa, Arizona "neck of the world". Mama Helen (a formidable, hard-working woman of European ancestry) was not only a full-time homemaker for her delightful brood, but an ordained evangelical/Pentecostal minister and feisty preacher with her own church and congregation. Papa Johnson was a one-time racing-car builder, inventor, and entrepreneur who, with his lovely wife, owned copper and turquoise mines sequestered near a lodge-style family camp near the Gila River, deep in the Arizona desert. Remember these things as we outline our story of Jessi Colter's unique beginnings: faith; family; fast cars; and the kinds of wide-open, mystically lonesome Western desert spaces that can often be the domain of genuinely maverick American "outlaw" personalities.

That inimitable, pioneering Western lifestyle formed the foundation of a loving family guided by the strong hand of Mother Helen's unshakable faith. These were key factors in the development of Jessi Colter's character. Throughout her adult life, Jessi has been known as a woman of class, sass, grace, independence, and a sizzling sense of humor as wry and dry as the desert sands from which she seemingly sprung. She is a woman of the American "West" and, though fame has enabled her to travel the world and light-up everything from concert stadiums and record company offices to glitzy Nashville, New York, and LA soirees, her identity will always be authentically linked to the gorgeous-but-arid land of her birth, and to the faith that permeated her stark and very "deep in the West" Arizona upbringing. It has always amazed me that some folks think that the only people who dwell in "the country" are to be found in the South. Sorry, honey -- that is Establishment Nashville smoke & mirrors, along with a lot of other twisted territorial foolishness. Authentic rural music is defined by whatever off-the-beaten path, outside-the-big city, hardscrabble outskirt and otherwise backwater American region can be found. Nashville is about as "country" as Times Square. Yet it has been the mecca for giddy artists who craved acceptance and who were subsequently eaten-up and spit-out. This, good friends, is why the term "outlaw" was even applied to country & western music to begin-with. Listen and learn from the likes of Waylon Jennings and his posse. Even so, every outlaw worth his or her salt tends to take a circuitous route on the journey to "find themselves" and gorgeous Jessi Colter was no exception.

There can be little doubt that children in large families often find wonderfully strategic ways to make themselves heard and to demonstrate their usefulness. Kids are resilient in this regard and the creative child can employ particularly effective methods in order to secure the attention and love that all normal children need and desire. Little Mirriam Johnson proved herself quite useful indeed; Mama Helen's church congregation needed a piano player and, when Mirriam demonstrated a swift talent for tickling the ivories soon after lessons commenced at age seven, a prodigy was just around the proverbial corner. Within four years, the scene must have looked portentous, like something out of a rollicking (but evangelistic) rock & roll bio-flick: Helen preaching God's love and the holy words of Scripture to her tongue-speaking flock, churning them into a crescendo of hallelujahs and prophetic exaltation, while, at the nearby upright piano, 11 year-old Mirriam was just beginning to strike the first, authoritative notes of a Gospel nugget like His Eye is On the Sparrow. The kid could play, and, with the help of God and the spirit-filled orchestration of Mama Helen, that church swooned and swayed with the searing brand of intense "soul" that has been the bedrock and constant wellspring of some of the greatest American musical artists of our time. Mirriam Johnson had soul -- and she came by it the real way ... hard work, innate talent, and instilled inspiration. No one had to "attach it to her" years later in some industry boardroom at the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood.

An eleven year-old girl striking the keys and filling a room, filling hearts with the wonderfully aching chords and melodies of soul-stunning Gospel music -- Gospel music up at the sharp end. That was only the beginning, folks, but what a beginning it was!

(STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO)