David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues CD Track Listing

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David Allan Coe Penitentiary Blues (1970)
Originally Released 1970\nCD Edition Released August 23, 2005\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: David Allan Coe's debut album, released in 1969 shortly after his release from prison, is in its way a wonder. Penitentiary Blues is far more a blues album than it is a country record, musically styled after the dark, loungy blues of Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis in his Mercury period as well as the rawer mercurial blues of Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Tony Joe White. The subject matter is far darker and foreshadows the subjects and themes of Coe's later country records. The title cut mentions everything from working for the first time to taking blood tests in his heroin veins. "Cell 33" is a wide-open rocking shuffle with Jerry Lee Lewis piano coming out of the backdrop of a muddy mix and playing solo after choogling guitar riff over lines like: "They'll find me hangin' here tomorrow/If they don't come with the key." Musically, Coe was wrapped in the blues, particularly the barroom tradition. At the time, his band was clearly not capable of handling the more sophisticated honky tonk songs he would be writing shortly thereafter, some appearing on his next recording, Requiem for a Harlequin. This is redneck music, pure and simple, fresh out of hell and trying to communicate the giddiness of reprieve as well as its horrors to the listener. There's an obsession with hoodoo imagery and death, with self-loathing and boasting, and the contradictions in a man who doesn't want to go back to prison but who seems resigned to the fact he will because he's been inside so long (for Coe it was almost 20 years), he has no idea how to live on the outside. There are hints and traces of the lyrical genius Coe would display later, but taken as a whole, Penitentiary is thoroughly enjoyable as a rowdy, funky, and crude blues record full of out-of-tune guitars, slippery performances, and an attitude of "f*%$ it, let's get it done and get it out," which was a trademark of Plantation Records during the era. Penitentiary Blues is a set of voodoo blues from a future country legend and pariah. -- Thom Jurek\n\nAmazon.com Product Description\nDeluxe Reissue Of The Debut Album From This Influential Country Renegade...On CD For The First Time Ever! An Album So Outlaw It Was Written Behind Bars \nDavid Allan Coe is one of the most popular and controversial figures in modern country music. It's ironic then that his debut album, Penitentiary Blues, wasn't a country album at all, but a blues album through and through. Though it received only limited distribution upon its 1968 release, it has achieved cult-classic status. Shout! Factory, in association with HackTone Records, is proud to release Penitentiary Blues on CD for the first time. The packaging mimics the original die-cut album cover, and in addition to a booklet with notes by Grammy-winner Colin Escott, we have put together a bonus booklet consisting of excerpts from Coe's legendary self-published book, EX-Convict. The result is the ultimate edition of this prison classic. \n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nBlues-soaked debut written in prison, August 24, 2005\nReviewer: redtunictroll (Earth, USA)\nCoe'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. \n\nRecorded 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." \n\nThese 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. \n\nHackTone'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." [(c)2005 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]\n\n\nHalf.com Details \nProducer: David Allan Coe (Reissue), Shelby Singleton Jr., Teddy Paige \n\nAlbum Notes\nPersonnel: 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).\n\nRecording information: Singleton Sound Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.\n\nDavid 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.\n\nIndustry Reviews\n3 stars out of 5 - [T]he record makes its mark, raw and rugged, and punctuated with bouts of crazy loon laughter.\n\n3 stars out of 5 - [T]hese songs rail like the spooked soul of a man with nothing left to lose.
This country cd contains 11 tracks and runs 30min 1sec.
Freedb: 8407070b

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