David Allan Coe, Singer of the ‘Perfect Country and Western Song,’ Dead at 86

David Allan Coe, the outlaw country music singer known for his unrepentant, confrontational image and songs such as “You Never Even Called Me by My Name” and “The Ride,” has died. He was 86.

Coe’s widow, Kimberly, confirmed the singer’s death to Rolling Stone. “One of the best singers, songwriters, and performers of our time [and] never to be forgotten,” Kimberly wrote to Rolling Stone. “My husband, my friend, my confidant and my life for many years. I’ll never forget him and I don’t want anyone else to ever forget him either.” A cause of death was not immediately available.

Coe was one of country music’s most complex figures. A walking tall tale who boasted about past exploits in prison and on the road, he was the author of his own mythology. Coe wrote mainstream hits for Tanya Tucker and Johnny Paycheck — “Take This Job and Shove It” was entirely his creation — and recorded country songs that still appear on multiple playlists and in radio rotation (countless jukeboxes include “You Never Even Called Me by My Name”). Still, a period of offensive, racist songs that Coe claimed were parodies make many bristle to this day.

Born September 6, 1939, in Akron, Ohio, Coe spent much of his early years in and out of reformatories and prisons, serving time for charges ranging from grand theft auto to possession of burglary tools. During one period of incarceration in the fall of 1963, he claimed to have killed a fellow inmate with a mop bucket after the man threatened him in the prison showers. In a 1975 interview, Coe said he once felt like he belonged in the penal system. “There were a lot of times when I would actually be in the county jail after being busted and I’d wake up the next morning and say to myself, ‘Oh I’m glad it’s over; I’m glad I’m going back to prison now, where I know I’ll be safe, where I’ll be out of society,’” he said.

The claim was a dubious one. “Ninety percent of what he tells you is probably bullshit,” Shelby Singleton, the Nashville producer who discovered Coe, told Rolling Stone in 1976. “We thought it was a gimmick and we promoted it in that manner.”