David Allan Coe - Texas Moon

David Allan Coe recorded these sessions in 1973 for Shelby Singleton's Plantation Records, backed by his own road band, years before Columbia turned him into an outlaw-country brand name. Then Plantation sold the tapes along with his contract, and the album did not surface until 1977. What you get is Coe before the mythology hardened: an ex-convict from Ohio, still figuring out how to sound like Nashville would have him.

Eight of the ten songs are covers, and the choices tell you everything about what he was listening to. Guy Clark's "That Old Time Feeling," Billy Joe Shaver's "Ride Me Down Easy," Mickey Newbury's "Why You Been Gone So Long," material from Kris Kristofferson and Jackson Browne, and Johnny Cash's "Give My Love To Rose" to close it out. He sings all of it straight, without the growl and the theatrics that came later. The two originals are where the persona starts assembling itself: "Fuzzy Was An Outlaw," and "Mary Magdeline," which has long been considered one of the best things he ever wrote.

The album is also remembered for its cover, which features Coe, his band and a dog mooning the camera. That is roughly the tension the whole record lives in: a serious singer doing serious material while the packaging insists on something else entirely.

Single LP on Plantation Records.