David Allan Coe

David Allan Coe (born September 6, 1939 in Akron, Ohio) is an American country music singer who achieved his greatest popularity in the 1970's. He is often overlooked when naming the "greats" of country music. He has written and performed over 280 songs throughout his long career.

Style

His songs are known for strong rock arrangements, often with a Caribbean touch ("Divers Do It Deeper"), a tough band with tough guitar solos ("Longhaired Redneck"), a personal touch ("Willie, Waylon, and Me"), and verbal facility. His "X's and O's", for instance, strings together every secret lover's code that any teenaged girl ever put on the back of a letter, starting with the title ("kisses and hugs") and opening line, "Deliver de letter de sooner de better".

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Coe is also known for his humorous, x-rated and unabashedly offensive songs of the 1970s (co-written with Shel Silverstein) such as "I'd Like To Fuck the Shit Out of You", "Fuck Anita Bryant," "Finger Fucking Sally" and "The Three Biggest Lies In the World." Coe is considered a racist by critics, who use his song "Nigger Fucker" as evidence. Coe claims that he is not racist, and that the song, which was recorded with a black drummer, was not meant to be taken seriously. It is of note that the man playing drums in the song is black, and married to a white woman.

Related Topics:
Shel Silverstein - Anita Bryant

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He is also known for his top country hit, "The Ride", which chronicles a driver picking up an Alabama hitch-hiker. The driver turns out to be the ghost of Hank Williams.

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Coe's long career has included 26 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.

Related Topics:
1987 - Matter of Life... and Death - Concept album

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Tax trouble contributed to his career's instability, though Coe has continued touring throughout the 1980s and '90s, also doing some writing and acting work. He played a crooked bounty hunter in the movie, "Buckstone County Prison".

Related Topics:
1980s - 90s

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After Paycheck's brief and strife-filled career ended, Coe made fun of him in his sequel, "You Can Take This Job and Shove It Too" with the line, "Paycheck you may be a thing of the past". He also made fun of Glen Campbell's singing a song called "Rhinestone Cowboy" with the line: "I've been the rhinestone cowboy for so long I can't remember."

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Coe's concerts, particularly in the '70s and early '80s, often attracted a rough and rowdy crowd, and Coe seemed to feed off the energy of his fans: a mixture of bikers, cowboys, and hippies.

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In concert, he frequently said after one of his hard-rocking numbers, "Take that, Bill Monroe!" Monroe is a country traditionalist, but so is Coe in his own way: "I can sing you every song Hank Williams ever wrote, and I can sing all them songs about Texas...".

Related Topics:
Bill Monroe - Texas

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