This week, David Allan Coe turns 75. Over those three-quarters of a century, Coe has given a face to outlaw country, raising rabble and raising hell even as he recorded some of the most enduring albums of the genre. In celebration of the perennial rebel’s landmark birthday, Legacy Recordings is making 20 of his classic albums (and over 200 songs), originally released between 1974 and 1989, to digital service providers including Amazon MP3, iTunes and Spotify. The digital initiative launches today with five titles released between 1974 and 1977 (The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, Once Upon a Rhyme, Longhaired Redneck, Rides Again and Tattoo) and continues weekly through September 23, totaling four batches of five albums.
Legacy’s online collection from the vaults of Columbia Records spans the period between 1974’s major label debut The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy (so named for Coe’s outrageous onstage get-up) and 1989’s Crazy Daddy and includes such signature songs as “Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone),” “Take This Job and Shove It,” “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile” and “She Used to Love Me a Lot.”
The controversial, anti-establishment country hero’s body of work remains one of the most exciting and most daring in the country oeuvre, and this one-stop (digital) shopping just might provide a welcome entrée to a daunting, large discography.
After the jump, you can raise a little hell by perusing the complete release schedule to mark David Allan Coe’s 75th!
David Allan Coe, digital release program from Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings, 2014
Available at all digital service providers. We have provided Amazon U.S. links below for the first batch!
09/02/14
1974 The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy
1975 Once Upon a Rhyme
1976 Longhaired Redneck
1977 Rides Again
1977 Tattoo
09/09/14
1978 Family Album
1978 Human Emotions
1979 Compass Point
1979 Spectrum VII
1980 I’ve Got Something to Say
09/16/14
1981 Invictus (Means) Unconquered
1981 Tennessee Whiskey
1983 Castles in the Sand
1983 Hello in There
1984 Just Divorced
09/23/14
1985 Darlin’, Darlin’
1985 Unchained
1986 Son of the South
1987 A Matter of Life…and Death
1989 Crazy Daddy
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Do you know who remastered this? Just curious. Shame Sony/Legacy’s making this digital only…
I don’t know, and sometimes they aren’t remastered, just from the original master tapes. What i do know is Bear Family put out a couple CD’s with two DAC albums on them and some have bonus tracks, i think they made it separate from each other. And some of the albums may be from the box set called “The Mysterious David Allan Coe: 4 Classic Albums 1974-1978”
Pretending like this is a big “Happy Birthday” is a little disingenuous, considering DAC lost all his publishing to these recordings. They were auctioned off to the highest bidder and someone else is about to become even more rich than they already have off of something they had no hand in creating.