Jessi Colter is one of modern music's singular talents, a singer, songwriter, and entertainer whose influence continues to echo across musical genres. An artist talented and versatile enough both to top the pop charts and to be part of the groundbreaking Wanted: The Outlaws album, Jessi Colter is assured a place in the history of both formats. With the release in 2003 of An Outlaw.. A Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter -- which No Depression called "one of the most important and plane necessary releases of the year" -- her legacy has been showcased again both for those who were part of the magic as it happened and for a new generation.

And yet, at a time when Jessi Colter past contributions are receiving a great deal of attention, it's her future that interests her.

Jessi Colter is in the studio with producer Don Was, recording music that, as always, transcends boundaries, drawing on her rich gospel roots and her R&B leanings, as well as on pop and country. It is music she will be taking, along with her rich catalog, on the road for selected dates throughout 2004.

The career cited as inspiration by artists like Allison Moorer and Iris Dement had its roots in Arizona, where Jessi Colter grew up the daughter of a minister. "By the time I was 12," she says, "I was performing, doing talent contests and local TV shows in Arizona. I was young and driven even though I wasn't worldly, I wasn't allowed in clubs. I played piano in church, but I also did the western dances in high school."

In the 1960s, while married to Duane Eddy, Jessi Colter became a songwriter of note, penning songs recorded by Nancy Sinatra, Don Gibson and Dottie West, among others. It was after her marriage to Waylon Jennings in 1969, though, that her career really took off. Talented and beautiful, she graced the cover of Waylon's folk-country classic "Cedartown, Georgia", after releasing her own debut, "A Country Star Is Born."

Jessi Colter 1975 Capitol Records debut, "I'm Jessi Colter," which she describes as "more or less a concept album about different aspects of relationships," contained both the classic "I'm Not Lisa," which topped the country charts and became a Top Five pop crossover smash, and the Top Five country hit "Whatever Happened To Blue Eyes." The fact that Jessi Colter wrote both of the hits (as well as most of the songs on the 2003 retrospective) was just one more testament to her talent.

A year later, Jessi Colter and Waylon, Tompall Glaser and Willie Nelson teamed up for Wanted: The Outlaws, a justly legendary and seminal country album and the first officially sanctioned platimum LP in country music history. She was a major force in two genres.

Jessi Colter had teamed with Waylon for Top 40 duets as early as 1970, but by late in the decade she was part and parcel of the Outlaw juggernaut, on tour and in the studio, holding her own and creating important music amid the formidable talents and egos of her husband and a widening group of male confederates -- and earning their enduring respect. They wrested artistic control from Music Row for a time, a legacy handed off to pop, rock and alt-country artists of recent vintage, as seen in the ranks of some of those citing Jessi Colter as an influence.

There were many years beginning in the 80s when, in the words of friend and admirer Kris Kristofferson, in which "her fierce commitment to being Waylon's soulmate and Shooter's mom put her own art in the background," but Jessi Colter overdue recognition in the form of her CD retrospective, and her reemergence as a recording and concert artist, bodes well for the future of popular music when it can surely use someone of her vision, originality, and accomplishment.