David Allan Coe, Songwriter Behind "Take This Job and Shove It," Dead at 86

David Allan Coe died Wednesday, April 29 at 5:08 p.m. He was 86.

His representative confirmed the news in a statement calling him "a Country Music treasure" who loved his fans and "a true outlaw and a great singer, songwriter, and performer."

Coe was both of those things. He was also one of country music's most complicated and contradictory figures, and any honest account of his life has to hold all of it at once.

The Music

Coe came up the hard way. Born in Akron, Ohio in 1939, he was sent to reform school at age 9 and spent much of the next two decades cycling through correctional facilities. He found music behind bars. When he got out in 1967, he headed straight to Nashville and performed on the streets to survive.

His debut album Penitentiary Blues came out in 1970. He struggled to find commercial success as a performer but proved immediately that he could write songs other people turned into hits. Tanya Tucker took his "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)" to number one in 1973.

Then Johnny Paycheck hit number one in 1977 with Coe's "Take This Job and Shove It" — a song so perfectly timed to its cultural moment that it became shorthand for a certain kind of blue-collar frustration that never really goes out of style. It earned Coe his only Grammy nomination.

His own performing career had peaks too. "You Never Even Called Me by My Name" — originally recorded by Steve Goodman, who co-wrote it with John Prine — became his first major hit in 1975. "The Ride" was a Top 10 country hit in 1983. "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" reached number two in 1984, his highest-charting single as a performer.

He released over 40 studio albums across his career. He wore a mask and a bedazzled jacket for performances for a stretch in the '70s, billing himself as the Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy. He claimed to be the original outlaw — ahead of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, who got more famous. "I was living it for years," he told a reporter in 1993. "Willie, Waylon — they just got more famous."

The Controversy

This part of the story doesn't get a pass just because he died.

In the late '70s and early '80s Coe recorded two underground albums that The New York Times described in 2000 as among the most racist, misogynist, homophobic, and obscene songs ever recorded by a popular songwriter. The albums circulated as bootlegs for years before Coe began selling them on his own website in 2000 — without his name on them.

His defense was that the songs were biker humor made for private parties, not serious statements of belief. He pointed to Black friends and employees as evidence he wasn't racist. He said he'd sold the rights to the songs in bankruptcy and wasn't profiting from them — though selling them on his own website complicated that claim. He did not apologize for the recordings.

He used the Confederate flag regularly throughout his career. Critics were consistent and pointed. His defenders argued his broader body of work told a different story. That argument never fully resolved and probably never will.

He also pleaded guilty in 2015 to obstructing the IRS from collecting taxes and was ordered to pay nearly $1 million the following year.

The Rest of It

Coe was married six times. He claimed to be a Mormon polygamist for a stretch in the '80s. He had five children — Tyler, Tanya, Shyanne, Carson, and Shelli. His daughter Tanya became a musician. His son Tyler hosted the country podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones and led his father's band until Coe fired him in 2013. They hadn't spoken since, Tyler told GQ in 2021.

He is survived by his wife Kimberly and his children.

Eighty-six years. Reform school at nine. Decades in prison. Forty-plus albums. Songs that other people turned into number ones. Songs that got him called a racist. A career that defied easy summary then and doesn't get easier now.

Whether you were a fan or not, that was David Allan Coe.

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