by Jochen Markhorst
Here’s my man, the great David Allen Coe
Key West is the place to go Down by the Gulf of Mexico Beyond the sea - beyond the shifting sand Key West is the gateway key To innocence and purity Key West - Key West is the enchanted land
“Scarborough Fair” was “my thing,” says Martin Carthy (Tradfolk interview, February 28, 2018), thinking back to the early 1960s, when every folk singer in London had their own signature song. Davey Graham had “Angi” (or “Anji”), Bert Jansch had “Strolling Down The Highway,” and Carthy had “Scarborough Fair”. But he certainly had no problem with Paul Simon confiscating it (“It’s a traditional song, for god’s sake! Why shouldn’t he do it?”), just as he could only appreciate Dylan’s reworking of the song into “Girl From The North Country” a few months earlier, in December ’62. As Martin Carthy has an opinion on that endless Plagiarism-Or-Inspiration debate as well:
“He did actually annoy some people by being such an effective piece of blotting paper. I don’t understand that, personally. I think it’s fantastic. Somebody suggested that “Blowin’ In The Wind” was actually a reworking of a tune called “No More Auction Block”. I’ve no idea if that’s true. There’s only a limited number of notes in the scale, aren’t there? You gonna trip over each other at some point.”
(interview for Prism Films, 2013)
Martin Carthy is a likeable and respected folk artist, but unfortunately not particularly authoritative – even after his downplaying There’s only a limited number of notes in the scale in 2013, plagiarism remains a hot topic. It even seems to be getting worse. In 2014, Robin Thicke has to pay millions to the heirs of Marvin Gaye after his global hit “Blurred Lines”, and Bruno Mars had to defend himself against no fewer than five colleagues and heirs after “Uptown Funk” (also in 2014), all of whom believed he had stolen from their respective songs (mainly from 1970s disco songs such as “Oops Up Side Your Head” and “Funk You Up”). Kate Perry, Ed Sheeran, the Beach Boys, Radiohead, the Beatles, Madonna, Shakira… no one is spared, and as long as the plaintiffs’ chances of success are about 50/50, little will change for the time being.
In general, plagiarism cases are often somewhat awkward. Especially when the complainants are heirs, but opportunism and feigned indignation colour virtually every case anyway. Occasionally, however, it can also be amusing—such as when the sunny carefreeness of paradisiacal Key West is disrupted by a minor plagiarism scandal.
Dylan does have a soft spot for outlaw country artist David Allan Coe. In the May 2009 Rolling Stone interview, he calls Coe “one of my favorite guys”, and before that, in his Theme Time Radio Hour episode “Tennessee”, he is even more enthusiastic:
“Here’s my man, the great David Allen Coe. A dangerous man, in and out of reform schools, correction centers and prisons since the age of 9. He supposedly spent time on death row for killing a fellow inmate who made advances to him. A Rolling Stone magazine reporter questioned Coe about this. His musical response was the song, “I’d Like To Kick The Shit Out Of You”.”
The love is mutual, as evidenced by the passionate ode Coe recorded in 1983 for his album Castles In The Sand. The title track is a tribute, a respectful declaration of loyalty to Bob Dylan and an assertive tirade against all journalists who peddle nonsense and lies about his hero, which Dylan will undoubtedly have appreciated. He is probably just as charmed by the next track, an exciting country-funk version of “Gotta Serve Somebody”. In the bonus episode for Theme Time Radio Hour Dylan recorded in 2020 on the theme of Whiskey, he takes the opportunity to honour Coe once again, putting Coe’s “Tennessee Whiskey” on the playlist, just as he did twelve years earlier, but this time in the version by George Jones:
“You’re listening to Theme Time Radio Hour, and we played a version of this next song on our Tennessee episode by one of my favorite outlaws, Edgar Allen Poe, no, I mean David Allen Coe. But I can’t imagine doing a show about whiskey and not playing this song. I also can’t imagine not playing George Jones, so I can kill two birds with one stone.”
In 1979, one of my favorite outlaws got into a dispute with one of my favorite songwriters, Jimmy Buffett. Perhaps igniting some inner conflict of loyalty in Dylan, but more likely it probably raised hardly more than raised an eyebrow. Coe moved to Jimmy Buffett’s Key West in the 1970s and organically adopted the congas, Caribbean Soul, and Gulf & Western sound. And more than that; the song “Divers Do It Deeper” on Coe’s 1978 Family Album sounds very, very similar to Buffett’s hit “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” – which Jimmy does not take too elegantly. “I would have sued him,” Buffett is quoted as saying, “but I didn’t want to give Coe the pleasure of having his name in the paper.” Which in turn awakens the troll in David Allan Coe. For his next LP, Nothing Sacred (also in 1978), David writes the scathing diss track “Jimmy Buffett” with some rather explicit insults. “Son of a son of a son of bitch, what’s all that bullshit for,” for example, winking maliciously at Buffett’s then-recent “Son Of A Son Of A Sailor”. With a conciliatory finale, though:
Now Divers Do It Deeper must have really made them mad Some of them reviewers said it really sounded bad Well they liked Margaritaville, me I liked it too Someday Jimmy, why don't we just both get drunk and screw Oh those creepy motherfuckers that think music is a whore Tell that you just don't live in Key West anymore
The LP can only be bought by mail order from David himself due to all the explicit lyrics and profanity. So he repeats his message on his next “regular” LP, Spectrum VII, the LP with perhaps the ugliest cover in Coe’s oeuvre (and that’s saying something after the gruesome Family Album cover). Under the credits on the back cover he writes “To Record Reviewers: Jimmy Buffett doesn’t live in Key West anymore” (the chorus line of the song).
Despite the hideous cover, it is a wonderful LP, Spectrum VII. Side A is called “Land Side” and opens with the catchy “Rollin’ With The Punches”, featuring a special, charming tribute: “Dedicated to Bob Dylan: I never thought it’d be easy Bob!” Apparently, Dylan also listened to the B-side, “Ocean Side,” and especially to the beautiful, epic song “Seven Mile Bridge”, from which Dylan seems to paraphrase the opening verse:
You know, as a child, he heard tell of the Seven Mile Bridge That connected on Marathon's shore Yes and it was the gateway to Key West His grandpa had told him ten times or more
… which Dylan then promotes to Key West is the gateway key. Coe would not dream of calling it plagiarism, of course. Not only because Dylan somehow has been above the law in that regard for sixty years now, but mainly because David Allan Coe is a devoted fan—placing Dylan’s borrowing on his mantelpiece like a Nobel Prize, no doubt.
To be continued. Next up Key West part 12: Everything is fuzzy and opalescent
Jochen is a regular reviewer of Dylan’s work on Untold. His books, in English, Dutch and German, are available via Amazon both in paperback and on Kindle:
- Blood on the Tracks: Dylan’s Masterpiece in Blue
- Blonde On Blonde: Bob Dylan’s mercurial masterpiece
- Where Are You Tonight? Bob Dylan’s hushed-up classic from 1978
- Desolation Row: Bob Dylan’s poetic letter from 1965
- Basement Tapes: Bob Dylan’s Summer of 1967
- Mississippi: Bob Dylan’s midlife masterpiece
- Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
- John Wesley Harding: Bob Dylan meets Kafka in Nashville
- Tombstone Blues b/w Jet Pilot: Dylan’s looking for the fuse
- Street-Legal: Bob Dylan’s unpolished gem from 1978
- Bringing It All Back Home: Bob Dylan’s 2nd Big Bang
- Time Out Of Mind: The Rising of an Old Master
- Crossing The Rubicon: Dylan’s latter-day classic
- Nashville Skyline: Bob Dylan’s other type of music
- Nick Drake’s River Man: A very British Masterpiece
- I Contain Multitudes: Bob Dylan’s Account of the Long Strange Trip
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side B
- Bob Dylan’s High Water (for Charley Patton)
- Bob Dylan’s 1971
- Like A Rolling Stone b/w Gates Of Eden: Bob Dylan kicks open the door
- It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry b/w Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues – Bob Dylan’s melancholy blues
- Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways – Side A
- Bob Dylan takes Highway 61 – Seven mercurial songs