Whether he was labeled outlaw or underground, Coe was clearly an outsider in Nashville’s music establishment, even throughout his successes as an in-demand songwriter and singer, eventually developing a core following around his raw, often obscene lyrics and a checkered and somewhat mysterious past.
His wife posted on Facebook in September 2021 that he had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and he made few appearances since then.
He did concert tours with Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, Neil Young and others. He wrote “Take This Job and Shove It,” a hit by Johnny Paycheck in 1977, and “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone),” a hit by Tanya Tucker in 1974. He was also the first country singer to record “Tennessee Whiskey,” penned by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, that has since become a genre standard and hits for George Jones and Chris Stapleton.
David Allan Coe’s story was never meant to be tidy. He came up hard and angry, a drifter through institutions and backroads long before he ever stepped into a studio. That rough beginning forged the raw honesty that made his songs cut so deeply, whether he was writing for himself or handing future anthems to other singers who’d never lived what he had survived.
