David Allan Coe, who has died aged 86, was a maverick country music singer known for his wild tales of prison life and working-class anthems You Never Even Called Me by My Name and Take This Job and Shove It; he was a pioneer of the “outlaw” movement which bristled against Nashville’s conservatism and conformism.
A broad, physically intimidating man who could often rub people up the wrong way, Coe arrived in the Tennessee city in 1967, keen to make it as a country music star despite being a self-declared “long-haired redneck” (though the flowing mane that was a feature of his later stage shows was a 3ft-long blonde wig).
He lived for a time in a hearse, perpetually parked outside the Ryman Auditorium, where he would don elaborate rhinestone outfits and a Lone Ranger-style mask and busk for gullible passers-by who believed he had just come off stage.
Six years after arriving in Music City, Coe hit the big time thanks to Tanya Tucker’s cover of Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone), which went to No 1 in the country charts. Coe signed with Columbia and released his major-label debut, The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, in 1974. It included I Still Sing the Old Songs, and a cover ofGuy Clark’s country staple Desperados Waiting for the Train (later popularised by the Highwaymen supergroup consisting of Coe’s fellow outlawsWaylon Jennings, Willie Nelson,Johnny CashandKris Kristofferson).
But it was the album Once Upon a Rhyme, released a year later, that gave Coe his imperishable hit, You Never Even Called Me by My Name. Written by Steve Goodman andJohn Prine, it was a self-knowing send-up of honky tonk stereotypes involving trucks, beer and dysfunctional families: “I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison/ And I went to pick her up in the rain/ But before I could get to the station in my pick-up truck/ She got runned over by a damned old train”. The song remains a jukebox staple in bars across the Southern US, and lived up to its cocky, spoken-word interlude declaring it the “perfect country and Western song”.
That bristling self-assuredness inflected all of Coe’s music, from his Hank Williams-inspired journeyman epic The Ride in 1983 to Son of the South (1986), in which he reels off a list of his all-time favourite artists – Hank Williams Jr, the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and “David Allan Coe” himself – and, finally, Willie, Waylon and Me (1987), in which he muscled in on Nelson and Jennings’s famous friendship.
It was a pointed dig at his fellow outlaws whom he considered more a part of the country music establishment; those peers, for their part, often suggested that Coe had a tendency to self-mythologise – and at points he claimed to have more than 300 tattoos, and be a practising Mormon and a polygamist.
Jennings in particular struggled with Coe’s abrasive, confrontational edge, and once said he would “stab you in the back and then ride off your name like he’s your best friend.”Shelby Singleton, the producer who discovered Coe, told Rolling Stone in 1976 that “Ninety per cent of what he tells you is probably bulls***t.”
Coe took issue with those who refused to acknowledge his influence: he was the first mainstream country artist to have an all-female backing band, Ladysmith (a milestone which was later wrongly attributed to Dolly Parton’s early collaborator Porter Wagoner).
Advertisement
David Allan Coe was born on September 6 1939 to Donald Coe and Dorothy, née Wilson, in Akron, Ohio, an industrial city then known as the Rubber Capital of the World. His childhood was impoverished and unhappy, ruled by his violent, drunken father, who worked at Goodyear Tires, and he was sent to a reform facility aged nine.
Two decades in correctional facilities followed, including three years at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown, where he faced charges for grand theft auto and possession of burglary tools. He later claimed that, while incarcerated, he killed a fellow inmate with a mop bucket after the inmate made homosexual advances in the communal showers, but this was later debunked; he also met the shock-rock pioneer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, of I Put A Spell on You fame, who encouraged him to start singing.
Prison left its mark on Coe: his first album, Penitentiary Blues, was released in 1970. Five years later, he reflected on how he had found solace in the system: “There were a lot of times when I would actually be in the county jail after being busted and I’d wake up the next morning and say to myself: ‘Oh I’m glad it’s over; I’m glad I’m going back to prison now, where I know I’ll be safe, where I’ll be out of society.’”
It was a fellow outlaw pioneer who earned Coe his most lucrative hit. In 1977, the aptly namedJohnny Paycheckhad a No 1 with a cover of Coe’s blue-collar anthem Take This Job and Shove It, which inspired the 1981 film of the same name, starring Robert Hays andArt Carney.
Coe’s commercial success began to plateau following his controversial albums Nothing Sacred (1978) and Underground Album (1982) – later reissued together as 18 X-Rated Hits – which were criticised for containing racist slurs and sexist stereotypes. Coe addressed the controversy in 2004, telling the website Swampland: “Anyone that would look at me and say I was a racist would have to be out of their mind.” It was not until his 1983 album Castles in the Sand – which contained The Ride – that Coe was welcomed back into the fold in Nashville.
Decades of obscure albums and purposely uncommercial projects ensued, including a pornographic novel. Late-life Coe was known mostly for his wizened, plaited beard and angry stage presence, as well as collaborations with the metal band Pantera and fellow country controversy-magnet, Kid Rock.
His final two decades were marred by financial struggles. In 2007, there were reports that he owed more than $290,000 in child support to his ex-wife Jody Lynn Coe (he was married six times), with whom he shares four children, including the country music podcaster Tyler Mahan Coe. Coe pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2015 and was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to repay almost $1 million to the authorities.
He is survived by his sixth wife, Kimberley.
David Allan Coe, born September 6 1939, died April 29 2026
