Coe, who originally made a name for himself as a songwriter, composing the 1973 Tanya Tucker hit “Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)”, gained prominence as part of the 1970s outlaw country movement and steadily released albums throughout the 1980s produced by Billy Sherrill, scoring his biggest hit in 1984 when “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile” peaked at #2.

Son of the South is a summit of sorts, being the first time fellow outlaw legends Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Jessie Colter appeared on a Coe release.

Coe composed “Willie, Waylon, and Me” for his 1977 album Rides Again, aligning himself with the outlaw movement (although some critics and fellow musicians viewed this as a dubious imposition), and maintained friendships with both men, despite Jennings cool treatment towards him at times.

Willie allowed him to hang around.”[1] In his autobiography, Jennings mentions Coe once (in a chapter titled “The Outlaw Shit”), calling him “the most sincere of the bunch”[2] of bandwagon jumpers, but contends “When it came to being an Outlaw, the worst thing he ever did was double parking on Music Row.”[2] Jennings also writes: He wrote a song called “Waylon, Willie, and Me” at the same time he started taking potshots at us in interviews, saying that Willie and Kris [Kristofferson] had sold out, that I was running around wearing white buck shoes, and none of us were really an Outlaw.

"[3] Coe also helped compose the title track, on which is heard Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts.

It's so surreal one is almost afraid to play the recording.”[4] The cover of Son of the South – Coe, sitting, holding a baby with a Confederate flag draped over his shoulders – was one more in a series of decisions that occasionally alienated Coe from the country mainstream, although Coe did print a message on the back of the album to diffuse any potential backlash: I was born in Akron, Ohio, and I moved to the South when I was in my early twenties which made me a “yankee” rebel son.

I am proud of that relationship as I am proud that my son was conceived in Nashville, Tennessee and he is truly a son of the south.The line “Regardless of what you’ve heard about me” likely refers to Coe's reputation as a misogynist and a racist, stemming from two independently released albums of explicit material, 1978's Nothing Sacred and 1982's Underground Album, which Neil Strauss called "among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic and obscene songs recorded by a popular songwriter.