David Allan Coe, the country singer-songwriter who wrote the working class anthem “Take This Job and Shove It” and had hits with “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” and “The Ride” among others, has died, a representative for Coe confirmed to CBS News. He was 86.

Coe died in a hospital around 5 p.m. Wednesday, his manager David Wade confirmed to CBS News in a statement Thursday. The cause of death wasn’t disclosed.

“He was a complicated man, an outlaw, and a great Songwriter, Singer, and Showman,” Coe said. “He had fans from around the world and appreciated them all.”

Coe’s wife, Kimberly Hastings Coe, told Rolling Stone he was one of the best singers and songwriters of our time.

“My husband, my friend, my confidant and my life for many years. I’ll never forget him and I don’t want anyone else to ever forget him either,” she wrote to the publication.

Whether he was labeled outlaw or underground, Coe was clearly an outsider in Nashville’s music establishment, even throughout his successes as an in-demand songwriter and singer, eventually developing a core following around his raw, often obscene lyrics and a checkered and somewhat mysterious past.

His wife posted on Facebook in September 2021 that he had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and he made few appearances since then.

He did concert tours with Willie Nelson, Kid Rock, Neil Young and others. He wrote “Take This Job and Shove It,” a hit by Johnny Paycheck in 1977, and “Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone),” a hit by Tanya Tucker in 1974. He was also the first country singer to record “Tennessee Whiskey,” penned by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, that has since become a genre standard and hits for George Jones and Chris Stapleton.

David Allan Coe’s story was never meant to be tidy. He came up hard and angry, a drifter through institutions and backroads long before he ever stepped into a studio. That rough beginning forged the raw honesty that made his songs cut so deeply, whether he was writing for himself or handing future anthems to other singers who’d never lived what he had survived.

As success found him, the contradictions only sharpened. He could write tender ballads that broke hearts, then turn around and unleash material so provocative it split the country world in two. Admired, condemned, imitated, he kept touring and recording, loyal to the fans who saw themselves in his scars. In the end, his legacy is a tangle of beauty and offense, rebellion and regret – a reminder that some voices are unforgettable precisely because they never fit politely into any frame.