Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 nation hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of many greatest stars to come back out of Nashville in three a long time, died on Monday. He was 62.
His dying was introduced on his official website. Elaine Schock, Mr. Keith’s publicist, stated in an e mail that he died in Oklahoma, the place he had lived his complete life.
Mr. Keith introduced in the summertime of 2022 that he had been identified with stomach cancer and was being handled with chemotherapy, radiation and surgical procedure.
In a latest interview with the Oklahoma Metropolis tv station KWTV, Mr. Keith, who performed a run of reveals in Las Vegas in December, stated he was nonetheless in remedy. “Most cancers is a curler coaster,” he stated. “You simply sit right here and wait on it to go away — it could not ever go away.” He stated that his Christian religion was serving to him get by means of the remedy and the potential darkish end result.
Singing in an alternately declamatory and crooning baritone, Mr. Keith cultivated a boisterous, in-your-face persona with recordings like “I Wanna Speak About Me” and “Beer for My Horses.”
Constructed round intelligent wordplay and droll humor — and greater than a bit of macho bluster — each topped the Billboard nation chart, with “Beer for My Horses,” a twangy, Rolling Stones-style rocker that that includes Willie Nelson as visitor vocalist, crossing over to the pop Prime 40.
Mr. Keith wrote or co-wrote most of his materials, which ranged stylistically from conventional honky-tonk to pop-country balladry and Southern rock. Greater than 60 of his singles reached the nation chart, together with 20 No. 1 hits, and he offered greater than 40 million albums worldwide. In 2015 he was inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame, a member of a category that included Cyndi Lauper, the blues pioneer Willie Dixon, and Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Lifeless.
Mr. Keith was already in his 30s, having scuffled for years to make it within the music enterprise, when he signed his first file deal in 1993. He had beforehand labored as a rodeo hand, a roughneck within the Oklahoma oil fields and a semiprofessional soccer participant to assist his younger household.
“I didn’t take many holidays the primary 20 years of my grownup life,” Mr. Keith stated in a 2018 episode of “The Large Interview With Dan Relatively.”
“After I got here out and my tune hit,” he added, referring to “Ought to Have Been a Cowboy,” which in 1993 turned his first No. 1 nation single, “I used to be doing 28, 29 reveals a month as a result of I didn’t know I used to be going to get a second hit.”
“On the time,” he added, “I used to be simply making an attempt to outwork everyone.”
His huge reputation — and blue-collar bona fides — however, Mr. Keith was typically a lightning rod for controversy, particularly the place politics have been involved.
Maybe essentially the most distinguished occasion was with “Courtesy of the Crimson, White and Blue (The Indignant American),” which was each a No. 1 nation single and a pop crossover hit in 2002. Mr. Keith wrote the tune in response to each the 9/11 assaults and the dying of his father, a disabled veteran who had been killed in an vehicle accident earlier that 12 months.
Delivered with heartland fervor akin to that of Bob Seger and John Mellencamp, the tune’s last stanza could possibly be heard as both a patriotic rallying cry or a jingoistic rant, relying on one’s standpoint.
Justice will probably be served and the battle will rage
This huge canine will struggle while you rattle his cage
And also you’ll be sorry that you simply messed with The U.S. of A.
’Trigger we’ll put a boot in your ass. It’s the American means.
Amid different backlash, the file triggered a protracted dispute with Natalie Maines, the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks), who heard the tune because the ugliest form of nationalism, deriding it as “ignorant” and taking Mr. Keith to job in interviews and onstage.
“I don’t apologize for being patriotic,” Mr. Keith stated in a 2007 interview with Newsday.
Fiercely impartial, Mr. Keith for years described himself as a conservative Democrat, confounding his critics with seemingly contradictory statements expressing admiration, for instance, for the ideologically divergent likes of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. (He later stated he had re-registered as an impartial voter.)
A very disarming occasion of Mr. Keith’s contrarian capability for shock was his 2003 recording of “If I Was Jesus,” an empathetic rumination harking back to classic John Prine.
“If I used to be Jesus/I’d have some buddies that have been poor,” he sang over a lilting Caribbean rhythm to open the tune’s second stanza. “I’d run round with the unsuitable crowd/Man, I’d by no means be bored/Then I’d heal me a blind man, get myself crucified/By politicians and preachers who acquired one thing to cover.”
It was sufficient that Mr. Keith, whose critics dismissed him as a loudmouthed boor, rendered these traces with self-deprecating understatement and good humor. Particularly disarming was his suggestion, in step with the tenets of liberation theology, that God takes the aspect of sinners and outcasts.
Impressed by Merle Haggard and different artists of a populist bent, Mr. Keith made music reflecting his roots within the working-class, post-Mud Bowl tradition of the Southwestern United States. In recognition of this kinship, he was introduced with the 2020 Merle Haggard Spirit Award by the Academy of Nation Music.
Toby Keith Covel was born on July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Okla., the second of three youngsters of Carolyn Joan (Ross) Covel and Hubert Ok. Covel Jr. His father labored as a derrickhand within the oil business. His mom was an aspiring singer who deserted her musical pursuits to change into a homemaker.
Mr. Keith grew up primarily in Moore, Okla., a suburb of Oklahoma Metropolis. He acquired his first guitar at age 8, and later spent summers along with his grandmother in Fort Smith, Ark., doing odd jobs at her supper membership and sometimes sitting in with the home band.
After graduating from highschool, he labored alongside his father within the oil fields, finally turning into a supervisor. At 20, he and a number of other buddies fashioned a gaggle referred to as the Straightforward Cash Band and began taking part in in native bars earlier than graduating to the Texas and Oklahoma roadhouse circuit.
Mr. Keith’s first foray into the Nashville music scene discovered him busking on road corners and knocking on doorways, to no avail, alongside town’s Music Row. It was not till a fan who labored as a flight attendant slipped his demo tape to the producer Harold Shedd, identified for his work with stars like Reba McEntire and Shania Twain, that he secured a contract with Mercury Data.
His debut album for the label, titled “Toby Keith,” produced 4 Prime 10 nation singles and was licensed platinum for gross sales of 1 million copies.
Decided to have a stronger, extra indelible stamp as a performer, Mr. Keith however grew stressed, transferring from one subsidiary of Mercury to a different earlier than discovering a house in 1998 with the newly minted Nashville workplace of DreamWorks Data. The change proved auspicious: Mr. Keith established a extra sturdy, if fractious, picture, and 11 of his subsequent 13 singles, together with “How Do You Like Me Now?!” and “I Wanna Talk About Me,” reached No. 1.
An even bigger, fuller sound accomplished this transformation, not solely matching Mr. Keith’s outsize persona but in addition incomes him Nation Music Affiliation honors for vocalist of the 12 months in 2001 and entertainer of the 12 months nominations in 2002 and 2003.
In 2005 he based Show Dog Nashville, an impartial label, for which he continued to have success, notably with a collection of alcohol-themed singles like “Get My Drink On” and “Get Drunk and Be Somebody.” “Red Solo Cup,” a country-rap quantity, hit No. 1 on the nation chart and crossed over to the pop Prime 20 in 2011.
Mr. Keith had performing roles in two function movies, “Damaged Bridges” in 2005 and “Beer for My Horses,” a 2008 film primarily based on his hit single. He additionally appeared in tv commercials for Ford vehicles and established worthwhile restaurant and clothes ventures. He was heralded on the quilt of a 2013 situation of Forbes journal as “Nation’s $500 million man.” The accompanying article reported that Mr. Keith’s private wealth exceeded that of each Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
Mr. Keith’s presence on the charts dwindled because the 2010s wore on. However in 2021 he was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts, together with 4 others, together with the bluegrass singer and mandolinist Ricky Skaggs.
Mr. Keith is survived by his mom; his spouse of 39 years, Tricia (Lucus) Keith; two daughters, Shelley Covel and Krystal Sandubrae; a son, Stelen; a sister, Tonnie; a brother, Tracy; and 4 grandchildren.
For all his belligerence and braggadocio, Mr. Keith demonstrated appreciable perception and restraint when, greater than a 12 months after it began, he walked away from his contretemps with Ms. Maines over “Courtesy of the Crimson, White and Blue.”
Having beforehand attacked Ms. Maines — going as far as to venture photos of her with these of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq on the stage at his concert events — Mr. Keith all however apologized for his function within the battle in a 2003 interview with CMT.com.
“It acquired fairly vicious generally,” he stated. “I’m embarrassed about the way in which I let myself get sucked into all that.”
5 years later, a rapprochement appeared imminent when Mr. Keith and the Chicks have been recruited to look in a tv business in assist of former Vice President Al Gore’s “We” marketing campaign to deal with local weather change. Reportedly due to scheduling conflicts, the collaboration by no means happened.