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This is really more of a 3-star album in terms of the quality of the songwriting, production, song-selection and how it "holds up" as a listenable record today, but it deserves a solid 3 and 1/2 to perhaps 4-star rating because it's the first album-length work by the excellent and far-too-often-underrated Jessi Colter, who four years after this release rose to genuine stardom in the pop, country and adult contemporary stratospheres on the strength of some crossover hit singles and a string of superb self-written albums for Capitol, not to mention her inclusion on the "Wanted: The Outlaws" era-defining album alongside Waylon Jennings (her husband), Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser.
This remastered, crisp and clean-sounding set, originally recorded and released in 1970, was produced by Chet Atkins and Jennings for the RCA label. It's an auspicious but strange little album for a number of reasons: Auspicious in that Colter would indeed become a big star in country music (though not with this presumptuous collection: the album title was overconfident, to say the least) and strange because Colter was always, in a very essential way, probably the most artistically "outlaw" of all her rebelliously labeled peers. I mean that in the sense that she wrote virtually all her own music but was not one to be categorized or forced into any sort of box or genre. She had started out as Mirriam Johnson, a girl from Mesa, Arizona, performing some Gospel in her mother's church as a child, joined (and briefly married) twang-guitarist Duane Eddy as a featured performer and back-up singer and later had some success selling her poetic, yearning, piano-driven compositions to artists as varied as Nancy Sinatra, Don Gibson, Dottie West and others.
She wasn't really a "country" singer or a "pop" singer, but her songwriting skills reflected the ability to mine stark and deeply personal romantic themes with an impressive amount of lyrical economy and emotive skill. Her voice was keening and wry, with the kind of breaking, bittersweet, feminine ache that could sell a sensual pop ballad, a sassy blues or juke-joint number, or, yes, a "my-man-done-me-wrong" country weeper. She was a strikingly original, poetic talent who was best when she stayed true to her own muse and wrote and sang melodies as she felt them deep down in the blood and the bone. That may have been one of the reasons she selected the stage-name of Jessi Colter, as a nod to an ancestor who reputedly rode with the Jesse James gang. She must have known her musical identity was rooted in being outside the confines of the typical, the expected. There was a big wild streak in her sound. But she was also, clearly, trying to pin herself down to one particular genre by the time she recorded this set. Colter certainly would not have been the first big talent to "circle back around" to country music, but she may have been feeling the pressure to make her delightfully versatile talent "fit in" somewhere --anywhere-- specific in order to establish herself as a solo act.
The results are a mixed-bag on this debut, but only because some of the tunes sound overly "forced" into a country framework. Really, any of these songs could have been arranged and successfully styled with big, late-1960s Wall of Sound pop/rock arrangements and they might have come across with the authority I suspect Colter originally had invested in them. The tasteful but unimaginative country arrangements provided by Atkins really don't suit the depth of emotion inherent in some of these tunes; I would rather have heard Colter just wail each and every one of these things with nothing but her trusty piano, exactly as she felt them. "Too Many Rivers" opens the set with some of those lustrous and lonesome trademark Jessi Colter vocals that always seem to walk an intriguing line between Gothic determination in telling her story without fear and a reflective, almost tremulous flutter of vulnerability (Think Bobbi Gentry meets Dolly Parton).
She's got loads of talent as a stylist and throughout this album you hear an artist developing her skills, exploring her range, rather than realizing it. Songs like "I Ain't the One" (in which she duets with Jennings) work the best, because the arrangements are broader than the rather manufactured "Nashville sound" Atkins contributes and Colter can let her voice crack a whip around some Hot Mama lyrics. It's a great song and one of her best duets ever with Jennings. "Cry Softly" shows tantalizing glimpses of the mystical balladeer Colter will become on later Capitol albums like "I'm Jessi Colter" and "Jessi" but the lyrics are a little weak in spots and the arrangement is, again, dreary. Luckily, Colter's voice shines like a beacon. She does fabulous interpretative work with "Healing Hands of Time," "It's Not Easy" and a howling-hot rendition of "Why You Been Gone So Long." The country arrangements get a little more playful on these numbers, too, which adds some atmosphere. "He Called Me Baby" is a pretty weak track -- one gets the sense that Colter was deliberately trying to write what she thought a "country" song ought to be, rather than writing a Jessi Colter song and then letting it go where it wanted to go. Things get more encouraging on "Don't Let Him Go" -- Colter is reachng for her poet's voice, here, and once more one can see the signs that, in a few years, she would be in huge command of her craft.
A few of these tunes ended-up on the extended-release version of the late 1990s "Outlaws" redo, including "If She's Where You Like Livin," which is just about the most country-fried thing Colter has ever written in her life, with some clever little lyrical turns and a smart hook. I'm not sure what songs were released as singles from this disc, but "Livin" ought to have been a no-brainer chart-hit: it's as good as anything floating around the C&W lists circa 1970 and Jessi sells it as only she can. That's the thing about all the true "outlaws" -- you weren't listening to "country" music, you were listening to Waylon Jennings music, to Jessi Colter music, to Willie Nelson music, etc. These American artists were raw and thoroughly original. No one else in pop, rock, or country wrote like them, sang like them, played like them or sounded like them. Even if other artists tried, they couldn't.
Overall, though, this album is just an appetizer for the truly exceptional and strong work that would define and fully actualize Colter's totally unique sound in the mid-late 1970s, particularly under the production of Hometown's Ken Mansfield. This is a good country album that sparkles here and there with big potential and, even if it doesn't hold up so well or compare to Colter's splendid first four Capitol albums, it is an historic record in its own way and a must for any fan who collects music by any of the "outlaws" and certainly for anyone who loves Jessi Colter music. What a thrill to simply own this record -- I never thought I'd have it in full. Not in a million years.
