Search - David Allan Coe :: Penitentiary Blues

+1/2 -- Blues-soaked debut written in prison

hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 08/24/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Coe's 1969 debut has become quite the collectable over the years, sought after by his fans as much for its rarity as for its raw look at the songwriter's roots. Written primarily while serving his final stint of prison time (3 years at Marion), its both a punctuation mark on the end of 20 years of off-and-mostly-on incarceration, and the launching point for Coe's entire musical career.



Recorded in Nashville for Shelby Singleton's SSS label (a sister to the Plantation label on which Singleton had cleaned up with Jeannie C. Riley), the basic blues lineup of guitar, bass, drums and harmonica hardly predicts Coe's later success in Country music circles. Yet, the raw-to-the-bone songs of prison life's hardships weren't all that different from those lamenting the circumstance of poor mountain dwellers and displaced Okies, and Coe's notion of an ex-con's worth clearly informed later successes like "Take This Job and Shove It."



These tales from the inside are more Leadbelly than Cash, and the music has more in common with Jerry Lee's post-Rock 'n' Roll blues sides (mixed with Screamin' Jay Hawkins' hallucinatory hoodoo imagery) than anything Nashville was producing in 1969. Coe's prison tattoo of an album didn't even acknowledge the system that was bucked seven years later by Waylon & Willie.



HackTone's deluxe CD reissue (the first legitimate CD issue for this title in its 36 year history) reproduces the album's original die-cut prison bars cover in digipack form, includes informative new liner notes from Colin Escott, and adds a telling excerpt from Coe's self-published book "Ex-Convict." [©2005 hyperbolium dot com]"