Peterson began performing in coffeehouses in Ottawa in 1966. She won an RPM Gold Leaf Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist in 1967 and, in 1968, joined Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen, Richard Patterson and Dennis Pendrith in a later version of the folk band3's a Crowd. She then joined the band TCB that recorded an album on the Traffic label. She left after that. 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. She had a hit single on the Billboardcountry charts with "Souvenirs", and won a Juno Award for Most Promising Female Vocalist in 1977. Following her 1978 album Taking My Boots Off, 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 It 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 "No Pain, No Gain", which hit No. 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 CBC 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.
Death
Peterson toured and recorded with Quartette until 1996, when she was diagnosed with cancer. Unable to perform with the band during her cancer treatment, she chose her friend and collaborator Gwen Swick to fill in for her, and died in Toronto on October 9 of that year. She is buried in Little Lake Cemetery in Peterborough, Ontario.
Tributes
Peterson 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. In 2004, her friend and songwriting partner Nancy Simmonds worked with several musicians to produce a new album, Postcards from California, from unreleased demos she had recorded with Peterson in the early 1990s.
