David Allan Coe , the country singer-songwriter who helped define Nashville’s “outlaw” sound of the 1970s and ’80s, and wrote “ Take This Job and Shove It ,” the song that would become the anthem of disaffected workers during the economic upheaval of the decade, died at a hospital Wednesday, April 29. He was 86.

His death was announced by his wife to Rolling Stone magazine. A cause and exact location of death were not disclosed. Coe reportedly was hospitalized several years ago with Covid-19 and had mostly retreated from public appearances since then, though it is not known whether Covid played a part in his passing.

Along with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Jessi Colter and others, Coe was a major part of the “outlaw country” movement that swept Nashville in the mid-1970s, offering listeners a rougher, rawer, more rebellious back-to-the-roots approach to country than the slick, string-heavy pop-ish “Nashville Sound,” or “Countrypolitan,” that had been dominant since the…