David Allan Coe

Background

Coe was born in Akron, Ohio, on September 6, 1939. His favorite singer as a child was Johnny Ace. At age nine he was sent to the Starr Commonwealth for Boys reform school, and he spent much of the next two decades in correctional facilities, including three years at the Ohio Penitentiary and Lancaster Industrial School. Coe said he received encouragement to begin writing songs from Screamin' Jay Hawkins, with whom he had spent time in prison, and he started writing songs in prison by 1963.

After concluding another prison term in 1967, he embarked on a music career in Nashville, living in a hearse parked in front of the Ryman Auditorium while he performed on the street. He caught the attention of Shelby Singleton, owner of Plantation Records, and signed a contract with that label. Coe was a member of the Louisville, Kentucky, chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. He was the father of Tyler Mahan Coe, creator of the Cocaine & Rhinestones podcast, and had four children with Jody Lynn Coe.

In 2007, news sources reported he owed over $300,000 in child support. On September 14, 2015, he pleaded guilty to one count of impeding and obstructing the due administration of the Internal Revenue laws. On June 13, 2016, he was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay the IRS $980,911.86 for the 2008 through 2013 income tax years.

Music career

Coe released his debut album, Penitentiary Blues, early in 1970, followed by a tour with Grand Funk Railroad. In October 1971 he signed as an exclusive writer with Pete and Rose Drake's Windows Publishing Company, Inc. in Nashville, where he remained until 1977. Other performers achieved charting success with songs he wrote, including Billie Jo Spears' 1972 recordings and Tanya Tucker's 1973 number-one hit "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)."

That success led to Coe being signed by Columbia Records; he recorded his own version of the song for his second Columbia album, Once Upon a Rhyme, released in 1975. His third album, The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, showed full commitment to country music and played a part in the evolution of outlaw country. The title refers to the gimmick Coe adopted several years before Glen Campbell had a hit with "Rhinestone Cowboy": dressing in a rhinestone suit and wearing a Lone Ranger mask.

Coe recalled in 2004 that Mel Tillis gave him the rhinestone suits, and he said the idea for the mask came from his father.

Musical style

David Allan Coe’s music blends blues with country, and he sings in a throaty baritone. His lyrics lean toward the humorous and comedic, with one critic calling him a near-parody of a country singer, while another praised him as an unashamed country vocalist who delivered the purest honky-tonk and hardest country of his time. His songs often boast about alcohol and drug use, coming across as boisterous and cocky. His debut album, Penitentiary Blues, was labeled both voodoo blues and redneck music, tackling topics like first-time work, heroin injection blood tests, prison, hoodoo imagery, and death.

It drew from Charlie Rich, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Tony Joe White. His first country album, The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, was described as alt-country, pre-punk, and a hillbilly take on Marc Bolan’s glitz, with Merle Haggard cited as an influence. Early in his career, Coe was known for wild live shows: he would ride a Harley-Davidson onto the stage, curse at the crowd, and perform in a rhinestone suit and a Lone Ranger-style mask, calling himself the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy.