Toby Keith didn’t find fame and fortune at an early age. He didn’t have a hit record until he was 31. When he did, he became a superstar, not just in country music, but in all music.
Keith died February 5 in Oklahoma. He announced in 2022 that he had stomach cancer. He had operations, chemo and radiation treatments. He was 62.
Keith fell in love with music while spending summers at his grandmother’s supper club in Arkansas. After high school, he worked in the oil fields. He played music on weekends in bars around Oklahoma.
He was discovered after a flight attendant fan passed along a demo tape to a music producer in Nashville.
Keith had twenty number one records on the country charts.
He wrote the song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” after the World Trade Center attack. But “Red Solo Cup” was his most popular mainstream song, reaching 15th on the Hot 100.
“Should Have Been a Cowboy,” was his first number one hit. He told the Oklahoman newspaper that he was on a hunting trip with friends when he wrote the song. One of his friends, dressed in hunting clothes, received the cold shoulder when he asked a much younger girl to dance at a bar. She declined. Minutes later, a young man dressed like a cowboy whisked her to the dance floor.
“You should have been a cowboy,” one friend laughed. The phrase stuck and Keith wrote the song in 20 minutes. He played it at every concert of his career.
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