Long before he became associated with Nashville and outlaw country, his early life was marked by instability and time spent in reformatories and correctional facilities.
He served time in an Ohio prison from 1963 to 1967 for possession of burglary tools.
Those experiences would later become an unavoidable part of the public mythology surrounding him.
But Coe insisted that music was more important to him than the stories people told about his past.
In a 1983 Associated Press interview, he explained that music had helped him survive his years in prison because nobody could take the songs away from him.
Even when he was isolated, he said, he could still create music in his head.
That idea became central to understanding Coe.
He had lived through difficult circumstances, but he turned those experiences into a musical identity.
When he eventually emerged from prison, he headed toward Nashville.
He was not arriving as a polished country star.
He was arriving as an outsider.
And that was exactly where his career would begin.
## The Man Who Wanted to Be Different
Nashville already had its own traditions and expectations.
Coe did not seem particularly interested in following them.
He developed a visual identity that was impossible to overlook.
Long hair.
Tattoos.
Rhinestone clothing.
A mysterious stage persona.
And, at various points, even a mask.
He became known as the “Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy,” a nickname associated with the image he created for himself.
It was part theater and part rebellion.
Coe understood that audiences remembered characters.
And David Allan Coe was certainly a character.
But underneath the unusual appearance was a songwriter with a distinctive ability to turn frustration, loneliness, humor, working-class anger, heartbreak, and defiance into songs.
His first album, “Penitentiary Blues,” drew heavily from material he had written while incarcerated.
The album was released in 1969 and did not become a major commercial success, but it established something important.
David Allan Coe had arrived.
