My Top Ten Songs About Hank: The Ride (#4)

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Hank Williams was a major star in his lifetime, and in death he's been a star in many people's songs. Along with counting down my favorite songs by Hank, I'm also counting down my favorite songs about Hank. Here's one of the classics. #4: The Ride - David Allan Coe Ah, what a piece of work David Allan Coe is. More a real outlaw than an "outlaw genre singer," Coe "turned 21 in prison" (to steal a Merle Haggard line) in one of several stints in prison. He began writing songs while incarcerated, and one song he wrote, "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)," was a #1 hit for Tanya Tucker. One of Coe's best-known songs as a singer was his cover of Steve Goodman's "You Never Even Call Me By My Name," and he references one of the numerous punch lines in that song ("you don't have to call me darlin', darlin'") here near the end: "You don't have to call me 'mister,' mister, the whole world called me Hank." The song is about an aspiring musician who's picked up by the ghost of Hank Williams. He takes him to the outskirts of Nashville then turns around, signifying how the town shunned Williams in his lifetime. It's a great ghost story...and a great song about Hank. The Ride Written by Gary Gentry and J.B. Detterline Jr. Recorded by David Allan Coe From Castles in the Sand, 1983 Here's the song that asks can you "moan the blues," a reference to Hank's song "Moanin' the Blues":