Songfacts®:

• Chris Stapleton's cover of
  "Tennessee Whiskey" is far more popular, but the song was first released in 1981 by David Allan Coe, an outlaw country singer who had his biggest hits in the '80s with the songs "The Ride" and "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile." The song was covered by George Jones in 1983 and revived by Stapleton on his 2015 debut album, Traveller.
• "Tennessee Whiskey" was written by a singer named Linda Hargrove after she played a show at a honky-tonk in Nashville and brought back home an aspiring songwriter named Dean Dillon. Here's how Dillon described that night to Songfacts:
  
  "Linda also wrote a song called "Is There Anybody Out There Who Can Shine" for Olivia Newton-John. But I was a young man back then, probably 25, 26. She was playing in some little dive in Nashville and I'd heard that she was going to be there, so I went to see her show, and then after the show I got to talk to her. We wound up going to her place after the show for not what people thought. I think it was about 4 o'clock in the morning - and I have good luck at 4 o'clock in the morning - we wrote 'Tennessee Whiskey.'"
• This is an appropriate song for David Allan Coe; one of the first songs he wrote is called "Jack Daniels, If You Please." Coe's discography is loaded with drinking songs, but he was never a big drinker himself. The backdrop of alcohol, though, is more about character development in songs about the human spirit. In "Tennessee Whiskey," he takes the form of a guy who has given up on love and has to make do with what's behind the bar. That's until a girl comes along who has all the best qualities of his favorite beverages. Her love is better than any drink.