Ask a hundred people to identify the music that most offends them, and you'll get a hundred different answers. Offence can be caused by accident, when an artist misjudges a mood, or makes too sudden a change of creative direction. Even blandness can offend those who believe art's job is to provoke, cajole or inspire. But rock and pop have long embraced shock tactics and the deliberate deployment of offence, often used to underpin the sense of community that brings fans together - it's a tactic that stretches back to rock'n'roll's opening of the generation gap.
Usually it's what the music stands for that causes offence, in endless variations on that original exploitation of the generation gap. But what of an album that is in and of itself offensive? What would it sound like? What would it be for? Who would it offend, and how? And what would happen to the artist that made it?
David Allan Coe may be the most controversial musician in country music history. Few artists in any genre have as many tall tales and wild allegations attached to their name (some of which have been spread by Coe himself), and there are plenty of fans who love him or hate him for reasons that have nothing to do with his music. He is one of the most celebrated and controversial artists to emerge from the outlaw country movement; a gifted songwriter and a charismatic performer, Coe is also a man who has followed his own path even when it meant traveling the hard way, and his life has been full of bad luck and misadventure.
Coe is a man of stark personal contrasts, a highly creative artist, and one of the most unique, eccentric personalities in the history of country music. A large man with long hair, tattooed arms and tough-guy demeanor. Coe spent several years spent in prison and obtained membership in the Outlaws motorcycle club. David Allan Coe appeared to be more of a real “outlaw” than any of the other singers in country music’s 1970’s outlaw movement.
Yet, he is also a songwriter of extreme sensitivity who has crafted some of country music’s most moving love songs. Other sides of his writing are comedic, purposefully insulting, and crudely sexual. He has continued to write, record, and tour for decades in his own strange and special style. It is safe to say that country music will never see another artist like D.A.C.
Read also: Safari Lodge in Zambia
Early Life and Career
David Allan Coe was born in Akron, Ohio, on September 6, 1939. He was a rebellious, misbehaving boy who, beginning at age 9, spent much of his youth in reform schools and correctional facilities.
As a young man in his 20s, he repeatedly got into serious trouble with the law for such crimes as burglary and auto theft, and he spent about five years serving time in Ohio State Penitentiary and Marion Correctional Institution. Coe later claimed that he was on death row for killing a man in prison. It should be noted, however, that Coe has always had a habit of telling fascinating stories that embellish his biography while not necessarily being true.
After being released from prison in 1967, Coe headed to Nashville, Tennessee, to take his shot at that music career. The homeless David Allan Coe lived in a red Cadillac hearse after arriving in Nashville. On weekends, he parked the hearse in front of the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, hoping to get noticed. The hearse was emblazoned with his name and “SUPPORT THE GRAND OLE’ OP’RY.”
He soon did get noticed. His writing and singing talents landed him a contract with an independent label called SSS International, which released his first album, a blues-based collection titled Penitentiary Blues, in 1969.
His songwriting generated more interest than his singing. An intelligent, gently touching ballad he wrote titled “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)” became a number-one country hit for Tanya Tucker in 1974. This success prompted Columbia Records to sign Coe as a writer and singer. Coe’s first Columbia album, 1974’s The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, was critically acclaimed but failed to produce any chart hits. Today, the album is viewed as a ground breaker in “alternative country.”
Read also: David Diop's Africa
Coe’s first chart success as a singer came with his 1975 album Once Upon a Rhyme. A humorous Steve Goodman- and John Prine-penned song from that album titled “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” rose into the top ten. In the song, which was a satire of “the perfect country and western song,” Coe characteristically (with his tendency to exaggerate) claims a key role in the song’s writing. Once Upon a Rhyme also included the Coe tearjerker “Jody Like a Melody.”
David Allan Coe became identified with the outlaw movement of the 1970s. However, while Waylon, Willie, and the other “outlaws” were known for rebelling against the Nashville music establishment, Coe often seemed to be rebelling against social convention in general with his outlandish (for that time in country music) behavior.
With his mysterious rhinestone cowboy persona, he sometimes performed wearing a gaudy black rhinestone-studded suit, big black cowboy hat, and black mask over his eyes, accessorized with a pair of silver skull earrings. He sometimes rode his Harley onstage as he shouted cuss words at the audience, which cussed back at him.
Despite Coe’s many recordings and eccentric antics, his best-known accomplishment is probably one song he wrote that became a hit for someone else. Coe’s “Take This Job and Shove It” was a monster hit for Johnny Paycheck in 1977 and 1978. The song struck a powerful chord with many working people, who could relate to the lyrics about a guy who just can’t stand his dead-end job anymore and tells his boss where to put it.
David Allan Coe performing in 2007
Read also: A Luxurious Retreat in South Africa
Controversy and the "Underground" Albums
Coe has always courted controversy, perhaps nowhere as much as on two independently released “underground” albums in the late 70s and early 80s. Many of the songs on these albums, though humorous, seemed purposefully designed to shock and stoke anger within the music industry, burnishing Coe’s reputation as an independent-minded rebel and outlaw.
In the 1978 album, Nothing Sacred, Coe included several songs with vulgar, sexually explicit, or insulting lyrics. Titles included Cum Stains on the Pillow, Masterbation Blues [sic] and F*ck Aneta Briant [sic], in which Coe managed to find a way of attacking the anti-gay campaigner that caused as much upset as she did. The song “Linda Lovelace” is about having sex with the famous porn star of that name. Another song insults conservative activist Anita Bryant for her opposition to gay rights. The song “Jimmy Buffet” takes on the “Margaritaville” singer for accusing Coe of plagiarism, with Coe singing that he and Buffett should “get drunk and screw” (borrowing a line from a Buffet song).
Nothing Sacred wasn't the final nail Coe would attempt to hammer into the coffin he was busy fashioning around his own career. That came in 1982 with its follow-up, Underground Album. Among the X-rated material this time was something that pushed the outrage even further: a song in which Coe wrote from the point of view of a white man whose partner had left him and their kids for a black man. He called it Nigger Fucker.
The 1982 album, Underground Album, was in a similar comedic, vulgar vein. One crudely titled song on the album led to charges of racism, to which Coe responded by proclaiming that anyone who “says I’m a racist is full of s-.” Those who best understand Coe and his music note that people who consider Coe a bigot of any kind simply do not understand his over-the-top use of humor and satire in his songs.
Coe has consistently denied ever holding racist views - at the time of Underground Album's release, the drummer in his touring band was black - but too much of that self-flung mud stuck. By the time Napster was invented, Coe's name was being wrongly attached to MP3s of real race-hate country songs - the micro-genre he had set out to satirise. Shunned by the Nashville establishment that had been about to embrace him, his career went into steep decline. Bad business decisions and alimony to numerous ex-wives didn't help: for a time he was so hard up he briefly lived in a cave.
"That's one of the reasons he's been banned for so long," says Hank Williams III, a latterday country music rebel who considers Coe a mentor. "He's looking at it from a non-racist, jail point of view: if you're in jail you're either with the blacks, the whites, the Latinos, or you're somebody's bitch. That's the mentality he was on."
Coe says that the Times' piece has wrongly spurred debate about whether he's a racist. "My drummer, Kerry Brown, is black. His father is (blues musician) Gatemouth Brown," Coe says. "Kerry is married to a white woman. His dad is married to a white woman. The things they say just doesn't make sense. My hair is in dreadlocks down to my waist. I dress like a New York pimp.
Rap musicians say the "N" word all the time, Coe says, yet face little to no retribution. Their lyrics, he says, go much, much further than his for a pair of albums that were never meant for widespread consumer availability in the first place.
Yet, for him, Coe says he gets the shaft. While others such as Eminem make millions and grace such magazine covers as Rolling Stone, they call Coe a racist.
He's living proof you can take it too far," says Williams. "He's just as good a writer as any of the old country legends were, but he burned as many bridges as you can, and that kinda catches up with you, I guess."
Later Career and Collaborations
Coe’s career entered the twenty-first century by strengthening his ties to rock music. He toured as Kid Rock’s opening act in 2000. Kid Rock’s 2003 self-titled album included the Coe-penned song “Single Father,” which became a minor hit on the country charts.
In 2006, Coe and members of the metal band Pantera released the album Rebel Meets Rebel, which featured a highly unusual mix of country and metal sounds. The songs on the album were recorded several years earlier, but the final product was not released until two years after Pantera guitarist and Coe’s friend Dimebag Darrell was shot to death on stage. The collection included the song “Get Outta My Life,” which featured country metalhead Hank Williams III.
Today, aged 71, the writer of a claimed 10,000 songs relies on gigs for his income - last weekend he played four two-hour sets at a biker festival in Florida. He declines interview requests because of poor hearing.
The 73-year-old Coe survived a serious automobile accident in March 2013 with head trauma, broken ribs, and bruised kidneys.
Rebel Meets Rebel album cover
Here’s a summary of David Allan Coe’s key career milestones:
| Milestone | Year |
|---|---|
| Released "Penitentiary Blues" | 1969 |
| "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" becomes a hit for Tanya Tucker | 1974 |
| Released "The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy" | 1974 |
| Johnny Paycheck's version of "Take This Job and Shove It" becomes a hit | 1977 |
| Released "Nothing Sacred" | 1978 |
| Released "Underground Album" | 1982 |
| "The Ride" reaches number four on C&W charts | 1983 |
| Collaborated with Pantera on "Rebel Meets Rebel" | 2006 |
David Allan Coe is one of the most controversial figures in country music, and his story is ripe for a deeper dive.
David Allan Coe FULL Documentary
Popular articles:
tags:
