Early career (1970–1975) Early in 1970, Coe released his debut album,
Penitentiary Blues, followed by a tour with
Grand Funk Railroad. Unlike Coe's first two albums, his third showed full commitment to country music, and Coe played a part in the evolution of what became known as
outlaw country. The title of Coe's third album,
The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, refers to the gimmick Coe adopted several years before
Glen Campbell had a hit with the song "
Rhinestone Cowboy", dressing up in a
rhinestone suit and wearing a
Lone Ranger mask. In 2004 the singer recalled to Michael Buffalo Smith, "I guess I have to blame it on
Mel Tillis. I met him when I first went to Nashville, and he had an office down on
Music Row. I was over there talking to him in his office, and he opened up the closet to get something, and he had a whole closet full of rhinestone suits. I just freaked out on that. He looked at me and said, 'You like that shit, I don't even wear those, if you want 'em, take 'em!' He gave me those rhinestone suits and I wore them everywhere." Coe maintained the idea for the mask came from his father: Coe's second album,
Once Upon a Rhyme, contains one of his biggest hits, "
You Never Even Called Me by My Name", written by
Steve Goodman and
John Prine, and which first appeared on Goodman's 1971 debut release. Coe's version became his first country top-10 hit single, peaking at number eight in 1975, and includes a spoken epilogue where Coe relates a correspondence he had with Goodman, who stated the song he had written was the "perfect country and western song". 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' train. Coe was a featured performer in
Heartworn Highways, a 1975 documentary film by
James Szalapski. Other performers featured in the film included
Guy Clark,
Townes Van Zandt,
Rodney Crowell,
Steve Young,
Steve Earle, and the
Charlie Daniels Band. Coe also wrote "Cocaine Carolina" for
Johnny Cash and sang background vocals on the recording that appeared on Cash's 1975 album
John R. Cash.
Outlaw years (1976–1982) 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. Coe, however, was still somewhat of an outsider, almost too outlaw for the outlaws, a predicament summed up well by AllMusic:
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". The song features Coe impersonating the vocal styles of
Ernest Tubb,
Bill Anderson, and
Merle Haggard. About the term "Longhaired Redneck", Coe later said, "It was terminology that I'd made up at the time. I was trying to tell people that not everybody with long hair was a hippie. Not everyone was the kind of person that thought you could punch them out, take their money, and that they'd say, 'I won't do nothin' about it'." By 1977, the outlaw movement was nearing its apex, having seen the release of Willie Nelson's blockbuster album
Red Headed Stranger and country music's first platinum-selling album,
Wanted! The Outlaws. Coe considered himself as integral as anyone in the evolution of the outlaw country genre and began saying so in his music. 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." Jennings' drummer Richie Albright called Coe "a great, great songwriter. A great singer. But he could not tell the truth if it was better than a lie he'd made up. Waylon didn't make him comfortable enough to hang around. But Willie did. I was around Willie quite a bit and David Allan was with him 80% of the time. Willie allowed him to hang around." of bandwagon jumpers, but contends, "when it came to being an Outlaw, the worst thing he ever did was double-parking on
Music Row", 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. Refusing to give into the flavor-of-the-month generic country "talent", Coe stuck to what he knew and sharpened the edges. It spent 19 weeks on the
Billboard country singles charts, reaching a peak of number four and hitting number two on the Canadian
RPM Country Tracks chart. The
ballad tells the first-person story of a hitchhiker's encounter with the ghost of
Hank Williams, Sr. on a ride from
Montgomery, Alabama, to Nashville. The mysterious driver, "dressed like 1950, half-drunk and hollow-eyed", questions the narrator whether he has the musical talent and dedication to become a star in the
country music industry. The song's lyrics place the events on
U.S. Route 31 or the largely parallel
Interstate 65. Buoyed by the single,
Castles in the Sand became the mainstream breakthrough that Coe and producer Blilly Sherrill had been trying for since the decade began.
Just Divorced in 1984 contains Coe's second-biggest chart hit, "
Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile", which rose to number two on the
Billboard country singles chart and number three on
Cashbox. In Canada, it reached number one on the
RPM Country Tracks charts dated for June 30, 1984. The song is a midtempo ballad about a young, blonde girl, featuring allusions to the
iconic Da Vinci painting. The song features one of producer Billy Sherrill's most elaborate productions, with one critic commenting, "The layered strings and organ work are slick, but they add such warmth and depth in contrast to Coe's voice that it works to devastating effect." 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 on the charts. The 1986 album
Son of the South included contributions from fellow outlaw legends Nelson, Jennings, and
Jessi Colter. His final recording for Columbia, the concept album
A Matter of Life…and Death, was released in 1987.
Later career (1990–2026) , in 2011 In 1990, Coe reissued his independent albums
Nothing Sacred and
Underground Album on compact disc, as well as the compilation
18 X-Rated Hits. Coe maintained that he wrote to Strauss during the writing of the article, but the journalist did not acknowledge any interaction between the two, only stating that Coe's manager refused to speak on the record.
Rebel Meets Rebel, with
Dimebag Darrell,
Vinnie Paul, and
Rex Brown, recorded sporadically between 1999 and 2003, was released in 2006, two years after
Darrell's murder.
AllMusic described it as a "groundbreaking"
country metal album. In 2024, he and
Hank Williams III collaborated with
Hardy on his song "Live Forever". Coe died on April 29, 2026, at the age of 86.
Outlaw origins Coe's integrity was called into question after his previous claim that he had spent time on
death row for killing an inmate who tried to rape him was debunked when a Texas documentarian discovered Coe had done time for possessing burglary tools and indecent materials, but never murder. In response to the success of Buffett's song, Coe wrote a song insulting Buffett, and it appeared on
Nothing Sacred. The album also contains a song targeting
Anita Bryant, a musician notable for her strong
opposition to LGBT rights, specifically her fight to repeal an LGBT
anti-discrimination ordinance in
Miami-Dade County. In the song, bluntly titled "Fuck Aneta Briant" , Coe calls out Bryant as being hypocritical for her opposition to the lifestyles of gay people, stating, "In fact, Anita Bryant, some act just like you". 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. Primarily because of this song, the material recorded by singer and
white supremacist Johnny Rebel has also been mistakenly attributed to Coe.
AllMusic, which did not review
Underground Album, gave it three out of five stars. Coe responded to the accusations by saying "Anyone that hears this album and says I'm a racist, is full of shit."
Bankruptcy Coe was in legal conflict with the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS), costing him the publishing rights to his compositions, including "Take This Job and Shove It". He stated in 2003: In another interview, Coe added, "All the songs on the X-rated albums were sold. I don't own that stuff anymore. I have nothing to do with that stuff. They have to give me credit as the songwriter, but I don't make one cent." == Musical style ==