Having disclosed his battle with cancer in 2022, Toby Keith, renowned for his bold persona and hit songs like “Who’s Your Daddy” and “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” has passed away at the age of 62.
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 the greatest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.
His passing was declared on his official site. Elaine Schock, Mr. Toby Keith’s publicist, said in an mail that he died in Oklahoma, where he had lived his whole life.
Mr. Toby Keith announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been analyzed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
In a recent interview with the Oklahoma City tv station KWTV, Mr. Toby Keith, who played a run of shows in Las Vegas in December, said he was still in treatment. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” he said. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” He said that his Christian confidence was helping him get through the treatment and the potential dark result.
Singing in an alternately declamatory and crooning baritone, Mr. Toby Keith cultivated a boisterous, in-your-face persona with recordings like “I Wanna Conversation About Me” and “Beer for My Horses.”
Built around clever wordplay and droll humor — and more than a small macho bluster — both topped the Billboard country chart, with “Beer for My Horses,” a twangy, Rolling Stones-style rocker that featuring Willie Nelson as guest vocalist, crossing over to the pop Top 40.
Mr. Toby Keith composed or co-wrote most of his material, which ranged stylistically from traditional honky-tonk to pop-country balladry and Southern rock. More than 60 of his singles reached the country chart, counting 20 No. 1 hits, and he sold more than 40 million albums around the world. In 2015 he was accepted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, a member of a class that included Cyndi Lauper, the blues pioneer Willie Dixon, and Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.
Mr. Toby Keith was already in his 30s, having fought for years to make it in the music business, when he marked his first record deal in 1993. He had previously worked as a rodeo hand, a roughneck in the Oklahoma oil fields and a semiprofessional football player to support his young family.
“I didn’t take many vacations the first 20 years of my adult life,” Mr. Toby Keith said in a 2018 episode of “The Big Interview With Dan Rather.”“When I came out and my song hit,” he added, referring to “Should Have Been a Cowboy,” which in 1993 became his first No. 1 country single, “I was doing 28, 29 shows a month since I didn’t know I was planning to get a second hit.”
“At the time,” he included, “I was just attempting to outwork everybody.”His endless popularity — and blue-collar bona fides — notwithstanding, Mr. Keith was frequently a lightning pole for controversy, especially where politics were concerned.
Perhaps the most prominent instance was with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which was both a No. 1 country single and a pop crossover hit in 2002. Mr. Keith composed the song in response to both the 9/11 attacks and the passing of his father, a debilitated veteran who had been killed in an car accident earlier that year.
Delivered with heartland fervor associated to that of Bob Seger and John Mellencamp, the song’s last stanza could be listened as either a patriotic rallying cry or a jingoistic rant, depending on one’s point of view.
In the midst of other backfire, the record triggered a protracted debate with Natalie Maines, the lead artist of the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks), who listened the song as the ugliest sort of patriotism, deriding it as “ignorant” and taking Mr. Keith to task in interviews and onstage.
“I don’t apologize for being patriotic,” Mr. Toby Keith said in a 2007 interview with Newsday. Furiously free, Mr. Keith for years described himself as a conservative Democrat, confounding his critics with seemingly contradictory statements expressing admiration, for example, for the ideologically dissimilar likes of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. (He afterward said he had re-registered as an independent voter.)
A especially disarming instance of Mr. Toby Keith’s contrarian capacity for surprise was his 2003 recording of “If I Was Jesus,” an empathetic rumination reminiscent of vintage John Prine.
“If I was Jesus/I’d have a few friends that were poor,” he sang over a lilting Caribbean beat to open the song’s moment stanza. “I’d run around with the wrong crowd/Man, I’d never be bored/Then I’d heal me a dazzle man, get myself crucified/By lawmakers and preachers who got something to hide.”
It was sufficient that Mr. Toby Keith, whose critics dismissed him as a loudmouthed boor, rendered these lines with self-deprecating modest representation of the truth and great humor. Especially disarming was his proposal, in keeping with the tenets of liberation theology, that God takes the side of sinners and outcasts.
Propelled by Merle Haggard and other artists of a populist bent, Mr. Toby Keith made music reflecting his roots in the working-class, post-Dust Bowl culture of the Southwestern United States. In acknowledgment of this connection, he was displayed with the 2020 Merle Haggard Spirit Award by the Academy of Country Music.
Toby Keith Covel was born on July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Okla., the moment of three children of Carolyn Joan (Ross) Covel and Hubert K. Covel Jr. His father worked as a derrickhand in the oil industry. His mother was an aspiring vocalist who abandoned her musical pursuits to become a homemaker.
Mr. Keith grew up primarily in Moore, Okla., a suburb of Oklahoma City. He got his first guitar at age 8, and later spent summers with his grandma in Fort Smith, Ark., doing odd jobs at her dinner club and once in a while sitting in with the house band.
After graduating from high school, he worked nearby his father in the oil fields, in the long run getting to be a supervisor. At 20, he and several friends formed a gather called the Easy Money Band and begun playing in nearby bars before graduating to the Texas and Oklahoma roadhouse circuit.
Mr. Keith’s first foray into the Nashville music scene found him busking on road corners and knocking on entryways, to no profit, along the city’s Music Row. It was not until a fan who worked as a flight attendant slipped his demo tape to the producer Harold Shedd, known for his work with stars like Reba McEntire and Shania Twain, that he secured a contract with Mercury Records. His debut album for the label, titled “Toby Keith,” produced four Top 10 country singles and was certified platinum for sales of one million copies.
Determined to have a stronger, more indelible stamp as a performer, Mr. Keith in any case grew restless, moving from one subsidiary of Mercury to another before finding a home in 1998 with Nashville’s newly minted office of DreamWorks Records. The change proved auspicious, with Mr. Keith setting up a more robust, on the off chance that fractious, picture as 11 of his another 13 singles, counting “How Do You Like Me Now?!,” and “I Wanna Talk About Me,” reached No. 1.
A greater, fuller sound completed this transformation, not as it were coordinating Mr. Keith’s outsize persona but also earning him Country Music Association respects for vocalist of the year in 2001 and entertainer of the year nominations in 2002 and 2003.
In 2005 he established Show Dog Nashville, an independent label for which he proceeded to have success, notably with a series of alcohol-themed singles like “Get My Drink On.” and “Get Drunk and Be Somebody.” “Red Solo Cup,” a country-rap number, hit No. 1 on the country chart and crossed over to the pop Top 20 in 2011.
Mr. Keith had acting roles in two feature movies, “Broken Bridges” in 2005 and “Beer for My Horses,” a 2008 movie based on his hit single. He also appeared in tv commercials for Ford trucks and established profitable restaurant and clothing wanders, being heralded on the cover of a 2013 issue of Forbes magazine as “Country’s $500 million man.” The accompanying story detailed that Mr. Keith’s individual riches surpassed that of both Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
Mr. Keith’s presence on the charts dwindled as the 2010s wore on. In 2021 he was a recipient of the National Medal of Arts with four others, counting the bluegrass singer and mandolinist Ricky Skaggs.
Mr. Keith is survived by his mother Carolyn; his wife of 39 years, Tricia (Lucus) Keith; two daughters, Shelley Covel and Krystal Sandubrae; a child, Stelen; a sister, Tonnie; a brother, Tracy; and four grandchildren.
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