“One thing for certain, you can't shake hands with a fist.”
- David Allan Coe
I wanted to follow up on the death of David Allan Coe this past Wednesday. Coe was an artist who was an important presence in my life for a short period of time. When I was in my late teens, a couple of his albums were part of the soundtrack to my world. Although his significance faded, his songs from that time have always held a special place for me. I'm sure you have a similar experience with some bands or musicians.
Coe spent much of his youth and his twenties in and out of reform schools and correctional facilities, including three years in the Ohio Penitentiary. When he got out of prison in 1967, he went to Nashville where he busked on the streets and lived in a hearse parked by the Ryman Auditorium. He caught the attention of a record company owner who signed him to a recording contract and through the early 70s he released several albums.
Coe lived and celebrated the life and persona of the ex-con, ruffian, non-conformist, and he maintained a long relationship with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. By the mid-1970s, he was identified with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and others as part of the “Outlaw” movement in country music, a faction that rebelled against the slick, over-produced product coming out of Nashville at the time. Coe, however, was almost too outlaw for the outlaws, just a tad too authentic, and he was always on the fringe of that scruffy collective.
His most well known song he didn't write, although he contributed a final verse and a spoken-word explanation for its necessity. You Never Even Called me by My Name was written by Steve Goodman and John Prine. Goodman, a friend of Coe's, had told him that he'd written the perfect country and western song and had put it on a 1971 album. Coe recorded the song in 1975 with the additional verse stating just prior to singing it, that he disagreed with his friend. It was not the perfect country song because nothing had been said about mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison or gettin' drunk. He then sings the added verse:
I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train
In reality, I think it was actually David Allen Coe that wrote the greatest and most perfect country song of all time. It's called If That Ain't Country. It's a mic-drop song as far as I'm concerned. You can find it and decide for yourself.
He wrote numerous songs that were covered by others and made famous. Most notably, Johnny Paycheck's version of Take This Job and Shove It. Also, Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone, that Tanya Tucker turned into a number one hit. That song is a good example of, despite his rowdy, outlaw image, his ability to write some exceptionally beautiful songs.
Sometimes artist and their songs come along in life just when you need them.