His most popular songs performed by others are the number-one hits "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" sung by Tanya Tucker and Johnny Paycheck's rendition of "Take This Job and Shove It".

Coe's rebellious attitude, wild image, and unconventional lifestyle set him apart from other country performers, both winning him legions of fans and hindering his mainstream success by alienating the music industry establishment.

[6] After concluding another prison term in 1967, Coe embarked on a music career in Nashville, living in a hearse which he parked in front of the Ryman Auditorium while he performed on the street.

Coe wrote back stating that no song could fit that description without mentioning a laundry list of clichés: "mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk".

Goodman's equally facetious response was an additional verse that incorporated all five of Coe's requirements, and upon receiving it, Coe acknowledged that the finished product was indeed the 'perfect country and western song' and included the last verse on the record: Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prisonAnd I went to pick 'er up in the rainBut before I could get to the station in my pickup truckShe got runned over by a damned ol' trainCoe was a featured performer in Heartworn Highways, a 1975 documentary film by James Szalapski.

By 1976, the outlaw country movement was in full swing as artists such as Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson were finally enjoying massive commercial success after years of fighting to record their music their own way.

He retired the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy persona and billed his new album as 'David Allan Coe Rides Again as the Longhaired Redneck', something equally off-putting to institution types.

[13]Longhaired Redneck was Coe's third album for Columbia in three years, and the first where he wrote or co-wrote all the songs; the outlaw country zeitgeist was summed up well in the title track, which recounts playing in a dive "where bikers stare at cowboys who are laughing at the hippies who are praying they'll get out of here alive".

As noted in AllMusic's review of the album, "On Rides Again, by trying to make a conscious outlaw record and aligning himself with the movement's two progenitors on the opening track, "Willie, Waylon, and Me"...Coe already set up self-parody unintentionally – something that continued to curse him.

"[13] The songs on Rides Again cross-fade without the usual silences between tracks, which was unusual for country music, and feature Coe's heavily phased guitar.

[16]Throughout the rest of the decade, Coe released a string of strong recordings, some of which, such as Human Emotions (1978) and Spectrum VII (1979), were concept albums with each side of the discs given their own theme.

1978's Family Album contains Coe's rendition of "Take This Job and Shove It", a song he composed and which had been released by Johnny Paycheck in October 1977, becoming a monumental success.

By 1980, Coe and producer Billy Sherrill set out to reach a wider audience and bring Coe back to the charts by inviting other singers and musicians to take part in the sessions for what would become I've Got Something to Say, which would boast contributions from Guy Clark, Bill Anderson, Dickey Betts (from The Allman Brothers Band), Kris Kristofferson, Larry Jon Wilson, and George Jones.

This process was continued the following year on Invictus (Means) Unconquered, with Sherrill couching the songs in tasteful instrumentation that put the spotlight squarely on Coe's voice.

[17] Coe was an important figure in the outlaw country genre, but judging by the sound of his recordings from this period, he had no interest in the trendy urban cowboy phase.

So I made my mind up a few albums ago that I was gonna do so many songs for the record company and so many for myself...we've turned the lights down low in the studio and the musicians have thrown away their little cheat sheets.

Over a languid beat and using simple language, Coe delivers a stunning vocal that expresses with weary resignation the bitterness, guilt, and extreme sadness that comes with a broken family.

)[22] The song tells of a chance meeting between two ex-lovers at 'the Silver Spoon Café', but when the man tries to rekindle the romance, she dismisses him in the same cavalier way he did her years earlier.

It was written by Dennis Morgan, Charles Quillen, and Kye Fleming, as Coe - who continued to write songs of high quality - nonetheless relied on outside writers to get him in the charts.

[3] In 1999, Coe met Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell in Fort Worth, Texas, and the two musicians, struck by the similarity of the approaches between country and heavy metal, agreed to work together, and began production on an album.

That same year, The New York Times published an article by journalist Neil Strauss, who described the material on Nothing Sacred and Underground Album as "among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic, and obscene songs recorded by a popular songwriter".

[23][25] Coe denied accusations of racism, stating that the songs in question were intended as ribald satire inspired by his friendship with Shel Silverstein, and furthermore noting that the drummer in his band in 2000 was a black man.

[15] Criticisms such as these notwithstanding, Coe always maintained he was integral to the outlaw country movement getting its name, stating in 2003: …the truth is that Waylon and Willie Nelson and I played at an outdoor festival called "48 Hours in Atoka", in Oklahoma...when we got there...several women were raped and people stabbed!

For example, "The House We've Been Calling Home", from the 1977 album Rides Again, explores the theme of polygamy ('me and my wives have been spending our lives in a house we've been calling a home...'), while on the final cut on the album, "If That Ain't Country (I'll Kiss Your Ass)", Coe utters a racial slur on record for the first time, singing the line 'workin' like a nigger for my room and board'.

The song paints a picture of a Texas family that verges on caricature, with the narrator describing his tattooed father as 'veteran proud' and deeming his oldest sister 'a first-rate whore'.

[23] Coe's 1979 Columbia album Spectrum VII contained a note stating "Jimmy Buffett does not live in Key West anymore", a lyric from a song from Nothing Sacred.

[30] The album's songs are profane, often sexually explicit, and describe an orgy in Nashville's Centennial Park and sex with pornographic film star Linda Lovelace.

"[34] Like Willie Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis, Coe has battled the IRS costing him the publishing rights to his compositions, including "Take This Job and Shove It".

[40] The album's influences included Charlie Rich, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Tony Joe White.

"[14] Coe's first country album, The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, has been described as alt-country, 'pre-punk' and "a hillbilly version of Marc Bolan's glitz and glitter".