For most country music fans, David Allan Coe‘s leaves behind a complicated legacy. Kid Rock is not most country music fans.
On social media, Kid Rock remembered Coe as a deep thinker who was kind and “about as real as an outlaw can get.” The pair’s relationship goes back at least 20 years with Coe writing the closing track on the Kid Rock (2003) album.
Related: David Allan Coe Dies at 86
“Single Father,” Kid Rock says, was written after they spent time together on the younger singer’s Michigan property. It was far from the only song Coe wrote for another hitmaker.
David Allan Coe’s Songs Written for Someone Else
In 1974, Tanya Tucker revealed her third studio album with a David Allan Coe-written song called “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone).” The edgy country ballad quickly hit No. 1 and remains one of the songs she’s best known for.
“Take This Job and Shove It” is even more famous. This became Johnny Paycheck’s signature song in 1977. The next year Coe recorded his own version but didn’t get nearly the same kind of response.
Read More: The Top 10 David Allan Coe Songs Prove He’s More Than Just Country’s Black Sheep
A similar thing happened three years later when he became the first person to record “Tennessee Whiskey,” a Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove co-write. George Jones would make it a hit in 1983 and then Chris Stapleton would take ownership of it in 2015.
Was David Allan Coe a Racist, or Was He Just Joking?
David Allan Coe was country music’s version of a wrestling “heel.” Sure, he was an outlaw but that word feels inadequate. He seemed to delight in cutting against social norms and was known to antagonize fans.
As with professional wrestling, it’s very difficult to parse truth from fiction in Coe’s stories. Among the most splashy are:
- He taught Charles Manson how to play guitar in prison.
- He killed a man in prison.
- He once claimed he had seven wives and was a Mormon who believed in polygamy.
- He responded to Jimmy Buffett’s accusations of plagiarism by recording a song called “Jimmy Buffett” that suggested the two men should “get drunk and screw.”
- He wrote another song called “Linda Lovelace” about having sex with the adult film star.
- His Underground Album album (which featured several racist songs) was meant as satire.
That last point is probably best well-known among the batch because the early ’80s album percolated to public consciousness again after an early 2000s New York Times piece. Coe responded to criticism.
Talking to Country Standard Time in 2000 he said being labeled a racist goes against everything he stands for:
“I’ve got a black drummer who’s married to a white chick,” Coe says. “I’ve got (black, former heavyweight boxing champion) Leon Spinks’ pictures all over my bus, pictures he took with my family. My hair’s in dreadlocks. I’m the farthest thing from a white supremacist that anybody could ever be.”
David Allan Coe Arrests
One thing Coe did like to exaggerate was his prison rap sheet. While he did serve significant time in prison as a young man, mostly for theft-related crimes, he used to claim to have killed another inmate for propositioning him. This story has been mostly debunked.
In 2015, he was sentenced to three years in jail for impeding and obstructing the IRS. Given how much praise is still heaped on other outlaw singers from his era who served time (i.e. Merle Haggard) it’s probably dangerous to cast Coe as villain postmortem.
Finding truth was always difficult for the public but he clearly kept a close inner circle that respected him, even if they didn’t understand him.
Talking to his Patreon followers after learning of his father’s death, Tyler Mahan Coe emphasized this chaos. His father’s career would look different if he’d allowed others to influences his choices.
“His legacy would probably be a lot better than .. some kind of eternally confused and confusing mess,” he says.
Read More: 30 Outlaw Country Songs That Define the Movement
In a lot of ways, Kid Rock is like Coe. A string of arrests? Check. Songs and statements that offend minorities? Yep.
Hit records? Absolutely. A loyal group of friends and fans that will defend him no matter what? No doubt,
Kid Rock also enjoys playing heel. It’s a role that suits both men well and in 20, 30, 40 or 50 years we’ll likely be having a similar conversation about the Detroit country-rocker’s complicated legacy.
Remembering the Country Stars Who Died in 2026
So far in 2026, country fans have mourned the deaths of a few of their favorite musicians and other large-looming figures of pop culture. Keep reading to remember the singers, musicians, actors and other notable figures we’ve lost so far this year.
Gallery Credit: Carena Liptak