David Allan Coe, the rock musician, has died at the age of 86 | The world

David Allan Coe, the country singer-songwriter who wrote the working class anthem Take This Job and Shove It and the hits You Never Even Called Me By My Name and The Ride among others, has died. He was 86 years old.

Coe’s wife, Kimberly Hastings Coe, it has been confirmed his death to Rolling Stone on Wednesday.

He described him as one of the best singers and musicians of our time.

“My husband, my friend, the person who revealed my feelings and my life for many years.” I will never forget him and I don’t want anyone else to forget him,” he wrote in the book.

A statement from Coe’s representative to People said he died around 5pm on Wednesday. The cause of death has not been disclosed.

Whether he was known as an outlaw or underground, Coe was a stranger in Nashville where he made music, and despite his success as a songwriter and musician in demand, he eventually began to follow his raw, profane voice and a rich and mysterious history.

His wife posted on Facebook in September 2021 that he was hospitalized with Covid-19 and has not been seen since.

He toured with Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, Neil Young and others. He wrote Take This Job and Shove It, a hit for Johnny Paycheck in 1977, and Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone), a hit for Tanya Tucker in 1974. He was also the first country singer to write Tennessee Whiskey, written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, that has since become a standard song with Chris Jones and a hit.

His country films included You Never Even Call Me by My Name, by Steve Goodman and John Prine, The Ride, and Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile. Coe also appeared in several films, including Stagecoach and Take This Job and Shove It, which was named after his song.

Coe, born in Akron, Ohio, spent a lot of time in correctional facilities as a child, serving time in an Ohio prison from 1963 to 1967 for possession of armed robbery. He also claimed to have belonged to the Outlaws motorcycle club, but some stories about his prison time and personal life have been exaggerated over the years.

“I couldn’t have gotten through prison without my music,” he said in an Associated Press interview in 1983. “Nobody could have taken that (music) away from me.” They would have put me in a hole with nothing to do but I still managed to make music in my head.

He recorded his first album, a blues album called Penitentiary Blues, using songs he wrote in prison. He later told reporters that he tried not to rely too much on prison as a song theme because of the similarities to Merle Haggard’s history, but that his criminal history was all people seemed to be interested in looking at.

Coe signed with Columbia Records and produced the album The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, which became his nickname after wearing a rhinestone suit and mask.

During the gang’s heyday, Coe put himself at the center of the scene, with songs like Longhaired Redneck, which had lyrics about playing in the nightclubs: “Where the bikers look at the cowboys laughing at the hippies praying they get out alive.”

He was featured in a well-known documentary about the band Heartworn Highways, in which they perform a concert at a Tennessee prison.

Coe, who had tattoos and sported long hair, said there was a diverse crowd that included bikers, doctors, lawyers and bankers. His last record, released in 2006, was a collaboration with Dimebag Darrell and former heavy metal band Pantera.

He released two R-rated albums, 1978’s Nothing Sacred and 1982’s Underground Album, which he sold through biker magazines. The music in these bars has been criticized for being racist, homophobic and sexist. He told Billboard magazine in 2001 that writer and songwriter Shel Silverstein had him write songs he wrote, which he regretted.

He said: “That was supposed to be sung at the bonfire of the bikers, and I still don’t sing those songs.”

In 2016, Coe was ordered to pay the IRS more than $980,000 in restitution for obstructing the tax agency and was sentenced to three years in prison. Court documents allege that Coe earned income from 100 concerts a year from 2008 to 2013 and may not have filed personal income tax or paid taxes on the contributions.