Country Star Who Sang ‘The Ride’ Was 86

David Allan Coe, the controversial outlaw country star best known for songs like “The Ride,” “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile” and “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” has died, according to Rolling Stone. He was 86.

Coe, born in 1939 in Akron, Ohio, got his start in 1960s Nashville writing for established artists. His stock rose in 1973 after Tanya Tucker brought his ballad “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)” to the top of the country charts. He signed with Columbia Records shortly after and released his first studio album, “The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy,” in 1974. His 1975 album, “One Upon a Rhyme,” featured one of his best-known works in “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.”

Just two years later, in 1977, Coe notched another No. 1 hit with Johnny Paycheck’s rendition of his song “Take This Job and Shove It.” The year before, in 1976, Coe released another one of his most celebrated works, “Long Haired Redneck.”

As one of the genre’s most confrontational figures, Coe’s career didn’t come without a fair share of controversy. The late ‘70s and early ‘80s saw the release of Coe’s two “X-Rated” albums: “Nothing Sacred,” which came out in 1978, and “Underground Album, which debuted in 1982. The pair of agressive projects contained racial slurs as well as overly homophobic and misogynistic language.

The 2010s brought legal trouble for Coe. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to impeding and obstructing the administration of tax laws. He was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay nearly $1 million to the IRS.