David Allan Coe
(born September 5, 1939 in Akron, Ohio) is an American country music singer who achieved popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. He has written and performed over 280 original songs throughout his career. As a songwriter, his best-known compositions are "Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone)," originally recorded by Tanya Tucker, and "Take this Job and Shove It." The latter was a #1 success for Johnny Paycheck, and it was later turned into a hit movie (both Coe and Paycheck had minor parts in the film).
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DAVID ALLAN COE TICKETS
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Style
David Allan Coe is well known as an "Outlaw" style country and western artist. Many of his songs are of a humorous topic and have lyrics about himself in association with other famous country "Outlaws."
During the 1980s, Coe enjoyed a resurgance in mainstream popularity, twice hitting the top 10 of the
Billboard
Hot Country Singles chart with "The Ride" (1983) and "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" (1984). The former song recounts a drifter's encounter with the ghost of country music legend
Hank Williams; the latter, a mid-tempoed ballad about a broken love affair, features allusions to the
iconic Da Vinci painting. He also just missed the top 10 in early 1985 with "She Used to Love Me a Lot."
Coe's long career has included twenty-six
LPs, with 1987's
Matter of Life... and Death
being one of the most successful and critically acclaimed. He even put out a
concept album,
Compass Point
, that threads his autobiography (or that of his persona) through an encounter with the famous
Caribbean studio for which it was named and where it was recorded.
Rebel Meets Rebel
Coe sang lead vocals for
Rebel Meets Rebel, a country-metal band consisting of Coe and
Dimebag Darrell,
Vinnie Paul, and
Rex Brown from
Pantera. The self-titled album was recorded between 2001 and 2002, but was not released until after Darrell's death in 2004.
Controversy
Coe was in and out of reform schools, correction centers and prisons from the age of 9. According to his publicity campaigns, he spent time on
death row for killing an inmate who demanded
oral sex. A public TV documentary produced by KERA TV Dallas followed Coe back to the prison where he did time. The show ended with a director's note that prison officials could not back up Coe's claims of being on death row.
Rolling Stone
magazine questioned Coe about the claim in an article titled "Rhinestone Ripoff," putting Coe in a position of having to prove his own guilt for a crime which has no statute of limitations. Regardless of the facts, Coe was incarcerated at several prisons, including
Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield OH (not the location of Ohio's death row at the time). He was paroled in 1967 and made his way to Nashville where he embarked on his career, recording for small labels before being signed to Columbia Records.
[1]
Coe recorded two albums in 1978 and 1982 containing
racist and
misogynistic lyrics of extreme
vulgarity and racial crudity: "
Nothing Sacred" and "
Underground Album." Also available is a best of the X-rated albums compilation entitled "18 X-Rated Hits." Coe has defended the songs (such as one deriding an adulterous wife who leaves her white husband and children for a black man as a "Nigger Fucker" in a song of that name) as bawdy fun which never made him much money - as well as pointing out that his drummer at the time, Kerry Brown (son of blues guitarist
Gatemouth Brown) is black and married to a white woman. Napster added to the confusion regarding Coe's racist songs by mislabeling offensive works by other artists, especially
Johnny Rebel, whose songs are often mistakenly attributed to Coe.
[2] [3]
Coe's second album, the psychedelic concept album
Requiem for a Harlequin
, contains many strong anti-racist and pro-civil rights statements. One track describes the birth of
soul music in a celebratory style; others are furious rants against the
KKK and what he calls "the asphalt jungle". Another track entitled "Fuck Anita Bryant" rants against
Anita Bryant for her opposition to homosexuality.
Coe was a member of the
one percenter biker club,
Outlaws MC.
Coe was a featured performer in
Heartworn Highways
, a 1975 documentary film by
James Szalapski. Other performers featured in this film included
Guy Clark,
Townes Van Zandt,
Rodney Crowell,
Steve Young,
Steve Earle, and The
Charlie Daniels Band.
Discography
Books
- Just For The Record...the Autobiography
- The Book of David
- Ex-Convict
- Poems, Prose and Short Stories
- Psychopath
- Whoopsy Daisy
(audio book)
Notes
- http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/coe_david_allan/bio.jhtml
- David Allan Coe rebuts racism charge
- Coe Revisits Penitentiary
References
- http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/coe_david_allan/bio.jhtml
- David Allan Coe rebuts racism charge
- Coe Revisits Penitentiary