16 Biggest Hits

Recorded between 1974 and 1996.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
Photographer: Alan Messer.
In the mid-'70s, when Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings emerged as the founding fathers of the movement known as "outlaw country," some Nashville musicians gaped in horror, and some jumped in headfirst. Allen Coe belongs definitively to the latter group. At the time, he was criticized for jumping on the bandwagon, playing up the jail time he'd allegedly done for murder, and recording me-too songs like "Willie, Waylon and Me." In retrospect though, he stayed harder for longer than any of his peers, even crossing over into southern rock territory on tunes like "Son of the South." And like Waylon Willie, and others, he's always had a knack for turning a hard-core honky-tonk song, such as "You Never Even Called me by Name," which bears a telling hint of irony. Hindsight proves arguments about Coe's initial "authenticity" irrelevant. The body of work whose surface this collection skims is impressive enough in its own right to label Coe as one of outlaw country's leading lights.