David Allan Coe — Ohio State Reformatory, Mansfield, Ohio

David Allan Coe spent much of his youth and young adulthood in correctional institutions, including time at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield — a Victorian Gothic castle of a prison that later gained fame as the filming location for "The Shawshank Redemption." Coe, who was born in Akron, Ohio, on September 6, 1939, claims in his own telling to have been institutionalised almost continuously from the age of nine until his mid-twenties, passing through reform schools and state prisons. The specifics of his criminal history have been disputed and embellished over the years, but the core truth of an extremely difficult early life is not in question.

Coe emerged from this background to become one of Nashville's most genuinely outlaw figures — not outlaw in the marketing sense, but in actual experience and attitude. He arrived in Nashville in the late 1960s, reportedly living in a hearse outside the Ryman Auditorium. He wrote "Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone)" for Tanya Tucker and "Take This Job and Shove It" for Johnny Paycheck, both enormous hits. His own recordings, particularly the "underground" albums he sold at concerts, pushed country music into territory it had rarely explored.

The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield closed in 1990 and is now a museum and heritage site, drawing visitors primarily for its "Shawshank Redemption" connections. Tours run year-round. For Coe fans, it represents a formative if brutal chapter in the life of one of country music's most contradictory and compelling figures.