Toby Keith spent the ’90s as a solid, workmanlike country star who met with considerable chart success, yet never quite broke free of the neo-traditionalist pack to become a household name like Garth Brooks or Alan Jackson. That all changed in 2002 when he recorded “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” a response to September 11 that became one of country’s most highly charged political statements since Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee.” The media furor ensured that even people with no knowledge of country songs still knew him as “the guy with the ‘boot in the ass’ song,” and helped make Keith a genuine phenomenon. Yet he’d been recording for nearly a decade prior and already had several chart-topping country singles to his credit.
Keith was born Toby Keith Covel in Clinton, OK, in 1961 and grew up mostly on a farm in Moore, up there with the outskirts of Oklahoma City. He took up guitar at age eight, inspired by the country musicians who played at the supper club his grandmother ran. He listened to his father’s Bob Wills records and fell in love with Haggard’s music. He worked as a rodeo hand during in high school, and after graduation, he found work in the nearby oil fields. In the meantime, he formed the Easy Money group and played Alabama-style country-rock in area honky tonks. After about three years, the oil industry hit a major downturn, and Keith turned to performing semipro football for a USFL farm team, even trying out (unsuccessfully) for the short-lived league’s Oklahoma City franchise. not long after two years as a football player, Keith decided to attention on music and adopted a much more rigorous giving concerts schedule. He cut a few records for local indie labels, and his demo tape eventually found its way to onetime Alabama producer Harold Shedd, who helped Keith land a deal with Mercury.
Keith’s self-titled debut record was put forth in 1993 and made him an out-of-the-box success with its chart-topping single “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” Three more music from the album — “Wish I Didn’t Know Now,” “A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action,” and “He Ain’t Worth Missing” — made the Top Five, and the album sold over two million albums. “Who’s That Man,” the lead single from his second album, Boomtown, was released in late 1994 and became his second number one; Boomtown hit stores in early 1995 and went gold on the strength of further Top Ten favorites “Upstairs Downtown” and “You Ain’t Much Fun.” Keith followed it later that year with the holiday album Christmas to Christmas and returned with the proper record Blue Moon in 1996. Its first two singles, “A Woman’s Touch” and “Does That Blue Moon Ever Shine on You,” went Top Ten, and the third, “Me Too,” gave Keith his third number one, also helping the album go platinum. released in 1997, Dream Walkin’ marked his first collaboration with prolific producer James Stroud, with whom he would work regularly from then on. “We Were in Love” and the title track were both Top Five hits, as was “I’m So Happy I Can’t Stop Crying,” a duet with Sting. However, Keith longed for an even bigger breakthrough, and he was growing dissatisfied with Mercury’s promotional efforts. In 1999, he left the label and came Stroud over to the Nashville division of DreamWorks.
Keith’s label debut, How Do You Like Me Now?!, appeared in late 1999 and started to bring him the wider recognition he felt poised for. The title cut went to number one on the country charts and brought him his first Top 40 pop hit; its follow-up, “Country Comes to Town,” went Top Five, and “You Shouldn’t Kiss Me Like This” also hit number one. Overall, the record had a rough, brash attitude that helped give Keith a stronger identity as a performer. It was also the first to bring him those long-desired major industry awards, when in 2001 the Academy of Country material named him Male vocalist of the Year and named How Do You Like Me Now?! its record of the Year. In the meantime, Keith became more visible in the mainstream media, making cameos on Touched by an Angel and in a Dukes of Hazzard tv reunion movie as well as co-starring in a series of telephone commercials. Later in 2001, his follow-up album, Pull My Chain, became his first to top the country charts and also his first Top Ten pop record. It spun off three number one singles: “I’m Just Talkin’ About Tonight,” “I Wanna Talk About Me,” and “My List.”
Keith was already a burgeoning superstar when he recorded “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” in the summer of 2002. A raging response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the song struck a fierce chord with aggressively patriotic listeners, during others condemned it as knee-jerk jingoism. The whole controversy came to a head when ABC News anchor Peter Jennings objected to Keith’s scheduled performance on a network Fourth of July schedule. Keith was axed from the guest list, and the ensuing media flap proved to be a publicity coup. Meanwhile, the song went to number one on the country charts and crossed over into the pop Top 25. All of this set the stage for Unleashed, which sold like hotcakes upon its release later in 2002, debuting at number one on both the country and pop charts. “Who’s Your Daddy?” was a number one country hit, and the Willie Nelson duet “Beer for My Horses” also made the country Top Ten.
In 2003 Keith put forth Shock’n Y’All, which despite its title was chock-full of enough rough-and-rowdy hits to once again connect hugely with heartland America. Honkytonk University came in May 2005, the same year that Mercury gave us Chronicles, a collection of three of his biggest albums: Toby Keith, Boomtown, and Blue Moon. After departing from Universal and longtime producer Stroud, Keith established his own company, Show Dog Nashville, and in 2006 released the label’s first record, the number two hit White Trash with Money. A year later he put forth Big Dog Daddy, the first record he produced himself, and also a holiday album, A Classic Christmas. That Don’t Make Me a Bad Guy came in 2008.
