An Outlaw and a Lady

February 13, 2017
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.