Jessi Colter has been intimately connected with a wide variety of modern American music, from early rock and outlaw country through rockabilly and alt-country.

She'll tell you plainly that all she was trying to do was make music her way.

Colter's first record was 1961's Lonesome Road, but she's best-known for the mega-selling 1975 country-pop hit I'm Not Lisa .

"A year before I wrote the song, I was studying music theory and a rhythm pattern came to me that I saved. One day after Waylon and I were together, I sat down at the piano in Nashville," she said, calling from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. "It was one of the quickest songs I've ever written."

"Waylon" is the late Waylon Jennings.

"We all wonder about our partners and how much of their past they bring with them," she said. Colter, who had been married to seminal rock guitarist Duane Eddy, was Jennings' fourth (and final) wife.

Colter says her lyrics slyly referenced Jennings' song Julie, which included the line "She was everything evil with the face of a child."

In Colter's song, she said with a laugh, "Julie is nice."

Baby boomers know Colter as the only female member of the '70s "outlaw" country movement that boasted Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and friends like Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard.

"Calling us 'outlaws' was Waylon's idea. He's the one that got us to sing on each other's records," she said.

"Years later Waylon would say I was the token outlaw girl, but I was the only one of them who had a gold record before that all started."

"All that" was the compilation album Wanted! The Outlaws, which became the biggest-selling country album up to that point and the first platinum-selling country album. The resulting tours broke attendance records for the genre.

Colter was born Miriam Johnson but later adopted her stage name, after a distant relative who rode with Jesse James' famous gang.

She had a string of big hits, including several duets with Jennings, but she effectively retired in the 1980s to raise a family while singing in her husband's road band. Jennings died of complications from diabetes in 2002.

"After Waylon passed, I kept real busy for a while. Lately I've just been writing. I've been in a relaxed mode. I'm not interested in taking to the road for no reason," she said.

Getting to know two young singer-songwriter fans, Celeste Krenz and Rebecca Folsom, along with "a good cause" prompted her to OK Friday's rare gig at the Boulder Theater.

When she does perform these days, she seldom sings any Jennings songs.

"I just loved the way Waylon sang his songs. To me, his voice as an instrument sounded more like a horn. He had this syncopation and punch nobody else had," she said.

Colter said her husband always had a shadow hanging over him from "the day the music died," as Don McLean famously put it.

In 1959, a young Jennings was a bassist on a Midwestern tour with his friend Buddy Holly as well as Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Jennings gave up his seat to Richardson on the plane that later crashed and killed all aboard.

Before the flight, Jennings said, he was joking with Holly, who told him he hoped Jennings would freeze on the tour bus. Jennings joked back that he hoped Holly's plane would crash.

"There was always a deep scar in Waylon from that," Colter said. "He left the business for two years after and just drove a school bus. He never opened up about the subject to me."

In 1995 when Jennings was interviewed for a documentary at home, she said, "I finally heard him talk about it in the other room."

Initially, she said, she was just as happy that her son with Waylon, "Shooter" Jennings, didn't seem interested in the music business, onstage anyway.

"Waylon didn't encourage Shooter to pursue music," Colter said. "He learned how to play instruments on his own, but we did get him a soundboard. Shooter drank it like water and started playing around with it."

Colter and Jennings were on tour with The Highwaymen, which included Nelson, Cash and Kristofferson, when they received a tape of some rock songs Shooter had put together.

"We're listening and saying, 'Who did he get to do the singing?' It was him. We had never heard him sing before. When Waylon found out, he smiled and said, 'The music's in good hands.' "

Jessi Colter With the Rhythm Angels: Rebecca Folsom and Celeste Krenz

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder

* Cost: $26.50; $108 VIP party with cowboy songwriter Jon Chandler. Proceeds benefit Blue Sky Bridge.

* Information: bouldertheater.com, 303-786-7030

* Of note: The last time Jessi Colter sang in Colorado was at inauguration festivities for Gov. Bill Ritter.

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