Product Description:
Personnel: David Allan Coe (vocals); Teddy Paige (guitar, harmonica); Mac Gayden, Charlie McCoy (guitar, bass guitar); Ed Kollis (harmonica); David Briggs (piano); Billy Linneman, William C. Sanders (bass guitar); Kenneth Buttrey, Karl Himmel (drums).
Recording information: Singleton Sound Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.
David Allan Coe is perhaps the most frustrating figure in the history of country music. An undeniable talent who has written some of the most sensitive and gripping `70s country ballads this side of Townes Van Zandt and some of the most rabble-rousing outlaw recordings, Coe also phoned in cloying cheese and, more repugnantly, subsidized his sometimes flagging career with unofficial recordings of extremely racist material.
The latter fact is what makes PENITENTIARY BLUES so oddly compelling. This is not a country record, not even remotely. Rather Coe emerged from his time in an Ohio penitentiary playing full-on, African American-influenced electric Chicago blues. Hearing Coe yowl clich?s like "sho' `nuff make you lose your mind" can be off-putting, to say the least, if not stomach-turning. Political correctness aside, though, Coe--perhaps toughened by his time in the clink--does lend a believable grit to this material and for the most part pulls it off. Completists will rejoice, but neophytes are advised to stick with his fantastic mid-70s outlaw albums.
David Allan Coe is widely known as one of the poster boys for 1970s Outlaw Country, and on PENITENTIARY BLUES, his debut album, Coe's patented bad-boy image was already fully formed. Musically, however, he was entrenched firmly in an urban blues mode, as opposed to the honky-tonk infused sound of his best-known albums. Nevertheless, his lyrics espouse his trademark themes of prison, trouble, and hard living.
Entertainment Reviews:
Uncut - p.127
3 stars out of 5 - "[T]hese songs rail like the spooked soul of a man with nothing left to lose."
Mojo (Publisher) - p.130
3 stars out of 5 - "[T]he record makes its mark, raw and rugged, and punctuated with bouts of crazy loon laughter."
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