Background and career
Rita Coolidge (born May 1, 1945) is an American singer and recording artist. During the 1970s and 1980s, her songs were on Billboard magazine's pop, country, adult contemporary, and jazz charts, and she won two Grammy Awards with fellow musician and then-husband Kris Kristofferson. Her recordings include "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher", "We're All Alone", "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love" and the theme song for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy: "All Time High".
Coolidge was born in Lafayette, Tennessee on May 1, 1945. She is the daughter of Dick and Charlotte Coolidge, a minister and schoolteacher, with sisters Linda and Priscilla, and brother Raymond. Coolidge's father was Cherokee, and her mother was half Cherokee and half Scottish. However, the Coolidge family was never enrolled in any Native American tribe. She attended Nashville's Maplewood High School and was graduated from Andrew Jackson Senior High School in Jacksonville, Florida. Coolidge is a graduate of Florida State University, and a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority.
After singing around Memphis (including a stint singing jingles), Coolidge was discovered by Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett, who worked with her in Los Angeles. There, she became a backing singer for artists including Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Harry Chapin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Dave Mason, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills. She was featured in Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour and album, singing Russell's and Bonnie Bramlett's song "Superstar". Coolidge did not receive songwriting credits for "Superstar" which later became a hit for The Carpenters. She became known as "The Delta Lady" and inspired Russell to write a song of the same name for her.
Coolidge also did not receive songwriting credits for the coda of the 1971 single "Layla" by Eric Clapton's band Derek and the Dominos. In 2016, Coolidge stated that she recorded a demo with her boyfriend, the band's drummer Jim Gordon, before they went to England to record with Clapton. Once they met with Clapton, Coolidge played the piece she composed for him and she gave him a cassette. Clapton, impressed by the piece, used it as part of the song in the ending section which she found out by hearing the song over a PA system a year later. She tried to contact Clapton, but was told by his manager Robert Stigwood, "What are you gonna do? You're a girl. You don't have money to fight this. Let it go." She has not heard from Clapton himself but believes he is aware of the situation.
Though only Gordon has been officially credited with writing the section, the band's keyboardist Bobby Whitlock said: Jim took that piano melody from his ex-girlfriend, Rita Coolidge. I know because in the Delaney & Bonnie days, I lived in John Garfield's old house in the Hollywood Hills and there was a guest house with an upright piano in it. Rita and Jim were up there in the guest house and invited me to join in on writing this song with them called "Time". … Her sister Priscilla wound up recording it with her husband, Booker T. Jones. … Jim took the melody from Rita's song and didn't give her credit for writing it. Her boyfriend ripped her off. I knew but nobody would listen to or believe me. I have told this story for years. "Time" ended up on the 1973 album Chronicles by Booker T. and Priscilla.
In November 1970, she met Kris Kristofferson at the Los Angeles airport when they were both catching the same flight to Tennessee. Instead of continuing to his intended destination in Nashville, he got off in Memphis with her. The two married in 1973, had a child in 1974, and recorded several duet albums, which sold well and earned the duo a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1974 for "From the Bottle to the Bottom", and in 1976 for "Lover Please". She also had a credited role as Maria in the Sam Peckinpah directed Western film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in 1973, where Kristofferson played the role of Billy the Kid.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
