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.