David Allan Coe

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About David Allan Coe

Growing up, singer-songwriter David Allan Coe loved listening to his mother’s big band records, but he also gravitated toward the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf as well as early R&B stars Hank Ballard & The Midnighters. ∙ Coe spent most of his teens and twenties bouncing between several Ohio reformatories and prisons. ∙ When he moved to Nashville to pursue a music career, he lived in a Cadillac hearse that he would park in front of the Ryman Auditorium on Saturday nights, when the Grand Ole Opry aired. ∙ Coe released his first album, Penitentiary Blues, in 1970 and later became a pioneer of the decade’s “outlaw country” music scene. ∙ In the early ’70s, Coe billed himself as The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, since he liked to wear a Lone Ranger mask and rhinestone-studded suits given to him by Mel Tillis. ∙ His first big break came in 1975 when Tanya Tucker had a No. 1 Country hit with his song “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone),” and Coe’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” was a No. 1 hit for Johnny Paycheck in 1977. ∙ A prolific songwriter, over the course of his career Coe composed thousands of songs that have been covered by such artists as Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Dead Kennedys and Kid Rock. ∙ Coe was discovered by a new generation of fans in the 2000s when he recorded Rebel Meets Rebel with members of Pantera and toured with Kid Rock.

HOMETOWN
Akron, OH, United States
BORN
September 6, 1939
GENRE
Country
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