Original image by There Stands the Glass.
My father and I harbored unseemly infatuations with sixteen-year-old Tanya Tucker when her interpretation of David Allan Coe’s "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" hit #1 in 1974. A few years older than me, the country star was among my first crushes. As for my dad, well, I’d rather not dwell on his fandom during that era.
“You Never Even Called Me by My Name” and “Longhaired Redneck,” Coe’s first two big hits under his own name, were cross-genre radio sensations in the Midwest. My outlaw-crazed father and I set aside our considerable differences in our shared appreciation of Coe’s loopy songs.
Regrettably, my old man incorporated Coe punchlines like "it'll hairlip the pope" into his everyday vernacular. The subsequent decade of Coe hits included the novelty song “Divers Do It Deeper,” the Hank Williams hagiography “The Ride” and the shameless cheese of “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile.” We loved it all, including a lot of sinister sleaze which I’ve since renounced.
Several Coe songs served as musical guideposts for me. For instance, the reference to the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1976’s "Willie, Waylon and Me" was the first time I’d heard of the band. And Coe’s catalog of drinking songs like “D-R-U-N-K,” “Tennessee Whiskey” and “Jack Daniels, If You Please” is on par with that of Merle Haggard and Gary Stewart.
The New York Times’ recent feature about The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters compelled me to begin compiling a list of the most egregious omissions. While Rodney Crowell and Kanye West were at the top of my ranking, Coe held a spot lower on the list until I learned he up and died on April 29.