Career
She began performing in coffeehouses in 1966, and soon attracted the attention of other notable folk musicians such as Bruce Cockburn and David Wiffen. In 1970, she was cast in the Canadian production of Hair. She subsequently moved to Kingston in 1971, forming the band Spriggs and Bringle with Mark Haines.
She then relocated to Nashville in 1974, and released her first solo album, Beginning to Feel Like Home, in 1976.
Following her 1978 album Taking My Boots Office, Peterson did not record new material for several years, although she appeared on two albums by the Charlie Daniels Band in 1980 and 1981. She continued to perform, however, touring with Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Waits and Ry Cooder, hosting television specials and appearing on Spirit of the Country and The Tommy Hunter Show, and working as a backing vocalist for Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller, Janie Fricke and Marty Stuart.
Artists such as Anne Murray, Ronnie Prophet and Sylvia Tyson also recorded Peterson"s songs. In 1986 Peterson released the single "I Had lieutenant All", which was a hit on the Canadian country charts and launched the most successful phase of her career.
She released the album Basic Facts, her first in ten years, in 1988, and had a string of ten hits, including "Number Pain, Number Gain", which hit Number.
1 on the Canadian country charts in 1991. In 1993, she joined Tyson, Caitlin Hanford and Cindy Church for a one-off concert at Toronto"s Harbourfront, and the four later also appeared together on Canadian Broadcasting Company Radio"s Morningside and on A Prairie Home Companion in the United States. Due to favourable audience response to the collaboration, they continued to work together, adopting the name Quartette and releasing their first album in 1994.
She toured and recorded with the band until 1996, when she was diagnosed with cancer.
She is buried in Little Lake Cemetery in Peterborough, Ontario. Colleen was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995.
Additionally, she was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2003, the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award, an award for young emerging songwriters, was created in her memory.