Poor Toby Keith, RIP
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
Ten years ago this August, (the 15th), singer/songwriter Toby Keith landed in Pharr for the city’s annual Hub Phest. General admission tickets went on sale for $50; $85 for VIP seats. He was 53 at the time. This Monday at the age of 62, he would have turned 63 in July, the one-time country superstar passed away after battling stomach cancer for the past two-plus years.
After his initial diagnosis, Keith did what most people his age and in his condition would do, since it was first diagnosed when he was only 60 — chemotherapy, radiation, surgery. But in the end, the cancer proved the victor. Keith died in his sleep this Monday.
The Big Time
The blonde-haired kid from Oklahoma first hit it big with his debut single, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” which shot to the top of the country charts in 1993.
Prior to that, he had worked in the Okie oil fields and played the redneck bars in a band called “Easy Money.” Promising himself that he would earn a recording contract by the age of 30, he went to Nashville, busked around Music Row, but went nowhere even though he distributed demo tapes he and the band had made to every record exec with whom he came into contact.
That’s when serendipity, the hand of God, call it what you will, came into play. On his return flight home, Keith had handed one of his demo tapes to a flight attendant, who in turn placed it in the hand of a Mercury Records exec who liked what he heard. So he flew to Oklahoma, listened to Keith live, who was performing solo by then, and signed the 32-year-old to a record contract.
His debut album, Toby Keith, went Platinum, and from there, he was off and running, quickly turning into a country music superstar.
After 9-11, he recorded “Shock’n Y’all, his eighth studio album, which was a take-off on Bush’s Shock and Awe. All the singles from the LP went to No. 1, including I Love This Bar; American Soldier; Whiskey Girl; and the country classic, I’ll Never Smoke Weed with Willie (Nelson) Again.
Along the way, he voted Democrat, supported Obama, said he liked McCain, and then switched to calling himself a Republican, saying in effect, that the mainstream Democrat Party had lost its direction somewhere along the way and had morphed into a political party he no longer recognized. As a “conservative Democrat,” he no longer felt at home, he said, and publicly endorsed W’s re-election in 2004.
A strong patriot (his words), he made numerous trips to the Middle East, starting in 2002, to support the troops deployed there.
“My father was a soldier. He taught his kids to respect veterans. It’s that respect and the thank-you that we have a military that’s in place and ready to defend our nation; our freedom.” (Source: Wikipedia. org.)
Never shy about speaking out, Toby Keith also said: “I don’t apologize for being patriotic... If there is something socially incorrect about being patriotic and supporting your troops, then they can kiss my a** on that, because I’m not going to budge on that at all. And that has nothing to do with politics. Politics is what’s killing America.” (Same Source.)
Keith said that in 2007. Look at us now. Five years prior, in 2002, Keith recorded a song in his dad’s memory, a year after his father was killed in a car accident.
“Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue” was the song.
Speaking about that song, Keith said, “My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye, but he flew a flag out in our yard until the day that he died. He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me, to grow up and live happy in the land of the free.”
ABC invited him to perform on a 2002 July 4th concert it was producing, but kicked him off the show after Peter Jennings, RIP, heard it and rejected it.
Keith said about Jennings, “Isn’t he a Canadian?” which was indeed the truth, born in Toronto.
The Later Years
More fan favorites followed — Beer for My Horses, Made in America — but by the time circa 2010 rolled around, his star was already starting to fade. Fewer record sales, fewer concert tickets sold. The youth culture had invaded country music, where the new superstars tended to look like they had never hung out in a bar, buffed and tan, had never suffered from a hangover, and preferred a nutrition supplement over a cold beer.
All the many hits — 32 No. 1 songs; 40 million albums sold; 10 billion streams — Toby Keith had recorded during the 1990s and early 2000s were suddenly looking back at him in the rear-view mirror.
With regard to his personal life, Keith was a Free Will Baptist and married his sweetheart 40 years ago this March. Together, they had three children.
In 2022, he did an exclusive interview with a local Norman, Oklahoma, TV station, which is still posted on YouTube, in which he spoke about the toll cancer had already taken on his body, his vigor, which included a clip from his last speech made before a live audience, showing that at least his sense of humor was still intact: “I bet you never thought you’d see me in a pair of skinny jeans.”
Among the top 5 richest country singers in the world, worth hundreds of millions of dollars – not bad for a kid from a small Okie town – Keith said in that one exclusive interview, “Cancer’s like a roller coaster. You just sit here and wait for it to go away. It may never go away. And even if it goes into remission, it’s still in the back of your mind. You’re going to have to do scans and stuff.”
Asked how he’s getting through his battle with stomach cancer, Keith said: “Faith. You take it for granted when things are good and lean on it when things are bad.’
Meanwhile, Willie, who is 28 years older than Keith and turns 91 this April, is still playing gigs, packing concert halls.
You just never know, do you? Like Keith once said, “We ain’t got a lot, but we don’t need anything. Covered in kisses, surrounded by love, showered with blessings from up above.”
RIP.