American singer and songwriter David Allan Coe, who was one of the most prominent figures of the “outlaw country” music movement in the 1970s and 1980s, has died at the age of 86. The death was confirmed by his representative.
Coe became famous not only for his own compositions, but also for the hits he composed for other artists. He made a permanent mark in music history mainly by being the first artist ever to record the song “Tennessee Whiskey” – a song that was later made famous worldwide by Chris Stapleton.
A native of Ohio, USA, he had an extremely busy adolescence. From the age of nine, he spent almost two decades alternating between reformatories and prisons for various crimes, including armed robbery.
Shortly after his release in 1967, he released his debut blues album, but on the advice of the legendary BB King, who warned him that as a white man he would not make a living singing the blues, he soon switched to country music. This move proved to be a turning point, and Coe released a total of more than 40 studio albums during his musical career.
However, his life and work were repeatedly overshadowed by serious controversies and problems with the law. For his early underground albums, he faced harsh criticism from the media, which described them as extremely racist, homophobic and misogynistic.
The singer himself rejected accusations of racism, claiming that he composed the controversial lyrics while behind bars, where, according to him, rude expressions did not carry such weight. Problems with the authorities did not escape him even at the end of his life. In 2015, he confessed to tax evasionfor which he received a three-year probation and the court ordered him to repay almost a million dollars.
