David Allan Coe, the country singer whose outlandish exploits, prison tales and obscenity-laden performances earned him notoriety as a transgressive exponent of the outlaw country movement of the 1970s and \u201980s, died on Wednesday. He was 86.<\/p>\n
Mr. Coe\u2019s death was confirmed by David Wade, his booking agent, who said he had died in the hospital but did not specify a cause.<\/p>\n
A pair of mid-1970s singles announced Mr. Coe\u2019s arrival as a Nashville outsider in the mold of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings \u2014 an original with an offbeat sense of humor, a deep baritone and a fierce resolve to be different.<\/p>\n
The first of those recordings, \u201cYou Never Even Called Me by My Name,\u201d a droll send-up of honky-tonk clich\u00e9s written by the folk singers Steve Goodman and John Prine, reached the country Top 10 in 1975.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was drunk the day my mom got out of prison\/And I went to pick her up in the rain,\u201d Mr. Coe sang on the record\u2019s final chorus, backed by a weeping dobro and a nimble country rhythm section. \u201cBut before I could get to the station in my pickup truck\/She got runned over by a damned ol\u2019 train.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Coe\u2019s other breakthrough hit, \u201cLonghaired Redneck\u201d (1976), found him doing spot-on impersonations of country forebears like Ernest Tubb and Merle Haggard while painting a surreal clash of cultures among cowboys, hippies and bikers at a dive bar.<\/p>\n
Mr. Coe wrote or co-wrote most of his material but had his greatest success with songs he wrote for others, notably Tanya Tucker\u2019s \u201cWould You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)\u201d (1973) and Johnny Paycheck\u2019s \u201cTake This Job and Shove It\u201d (1977). Both records were No. 1 country singles, and \u201cTake This Job and Shove It\u201d inspired a 1981 movie in which Mr. Coe had a minor role. He also wrote for the Dead Kennedys and Johnny Cash.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can write at the drop of a hat,\u201d Mr. Coe said in a 2003 interview with Review magazine. \u201cIf someone tells me they will give me $10,000 to write six songs about peanut butter, they would have them in 15 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike Mr. Cash, who only sang about prisons and performed in them, Mr. Coe was the genuine article. Incarcerated for crimes ranging from auto theft and the possession of tools to commit burglary, he spent three years in the 1960s in the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he claimed to have killed another inmate who tried to rape him.<\/p>\n
That story, later debunked by the news media, was typical of the outlaw aura that surrounded Mr. Coe and often obscured his gifts as a singer, songwriter and performer.<\/p>\n