DAC's debut album, released in 1969 shortly after his release from prison, is in its way a wonder. Penitentiary Blues is far more a blues album than it is a country record, musically styled after the dark, loungy blues of Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis in his Mercury period as well as the rawer mercurial blues of Bo Diddley, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Tony Joe White. The subject matter is far darker and foreshadows the subjects and themes of DAC's later country records. The title cut mentions everything from working for the first time to taking blood tests in his heroin veins. "Cell 33" is a wide-open rocking shuffle with Jerry Lee Lewis piano coming out of the backdrop of a muddy mix and playing solo after choogling guitar riff over lines like: "They'll find me hangin' here tomorrow/If they don't come with the key." Musically, DAC was wrapped in the blues, particularly the barroom tradition. At the time, his band was clearly not capable of handling the more sophisticated honky tonk songs he would be writing shortly thereafter, some appearing on his next recording, Requiem for a Harlequin. This is redneck music, pure and simple, fresh out of hell and trying to communicate the giddiness of reprieve as well as its horrors to the listener. There's an obsession with hoodoo imagery and death, with self-loathing and boasting, and the contradictions in a man who doesn't want to go back to prison but who seems resigned to the fact he will because he's been inside so long (for DAC it was almost 20 years), he has no idea how to live on the outside. There are hints and traces of the lyrical genius DAC would display later, but taken as a whole, Penitentiary is thoroughly enjoyable as a rowdy, funky, and crude blues record full of out-of-tune guitars, slippery performances, and an attitude of "f*%$ it, let's get it done and get it out," which was a trademark of Plantation Records during the era. Penitentiary Blues is a set of voodoo blues from a future country legend and pariah.

ANother Review said....

This is the holy grail with most David Allan Coe fans. When we saw him at the House Of Blues here in Chicago, the biker diehards hooted with joy when Coe encored with "Little David" and "Death Row" from this album. The label owner, Shelby Singleton was a backwoods Neil Bogart (president of Buddha and Casablanca). From Jeanie C. Riley's "Harper Valley, PTA" to Rod Hart's gay trucker novelty record "CB Savage" to masked Elvis "resurrection," Orion, Singleton knew a thing or two about marketing gimmicks. A Blues-rockin' ex-con was right up his alley. The album's gatefold cover had die-cut rectangles on the front (against a pic of Coe doing his best Pigmeat Markham frown) to simulate prison bars! The back has four color pix of a pencil thin Coe, in period appropriate hippie attire---one shot has him posing in front of the white funeral hearse he used to drive to gigs in, with paste on letters, old-school handbills (the bold letter ones you see for Blues shows and wrestling matches) and pasted in the windows are Coe 7 inch singles (who has those today!), all advertising "DAVE COE." Another photo has the skinny Coe hitchhiking on a Tennessee highway with a cherry red Fender Strat in his hand. If you look close, his fly is open (free advertising for the ladies?). Even if you didn't know who Coe was, you should have bought this for the cover! Rolling Stone actually gave this a positive review calling it "a sleeper" with a "50s Sun sound." Coe's booming voice is swimming in echo at all times, songs like "One Way Ticket To Nowhere," hint at Rockabilly (great chicken-picking guitar) and he obviously grew up listening to WLAC's Black programming at night. "Monkey David Wine" (scary monkey imitations---did he bring King Kong into the studio?) looks back at Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "Alligator Wine," and the litany of gross-sounding foods in "Death Row" stretches back to Jimmy Roger's "My Last Meal" (later covered Little Richard style by Hurricane Harry on Okeh), and Hawkins' "There's Something Wrong With you." "The Bells," Billy Ward and the Dominos old doo-wop weeper (about the death of a lover) is reworked as "Funeral Parlor Blues." Together with other tunes like "Conjer Man," this is one tuff album. After listening to his diverse Columbia albums, the songs here damn near run together after awhile, but it hauls ass over the usual hippie Blues of the period. There'll be dancing in the streets when they reissue this one.