Toby Keith, the country rocker known for red Solo cups and putting a boot in the a** of the Taliban, has died of cancer at the age of 62. His brand of unabashed American spunk will be missed.
The New York Times writes of Toby Keith’s early life:
Toby Keith Covel was born on July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Okla., the second 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 singer 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 grandmother in Fort Smith, Ark., doing odd jobs at her supper club and occasionally sitting in with the house band.
After graduating from high school, he worked alongside his father in the oil fields, eventually becoming a supervisor. At 20, he and several friends formed a group called the Easy Money Band and started playing in local bars before graduating to the Texas and Oklahoma roadhouse circuit.
Work ethic and cheek brought Keith to national prominence throughout the ’90s, and he won vocalist of the year in 2001 at the Country Music Association honors. But it was the Aughts wherein he’d make his lasting mark, with his post-9/11 door-kicker of a single, “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American),” outraging the dovish Left while delighting anyone who didn’t subscribe to the New Yorker. Jingoistic? You’d better believe it, brother. Wrong? Not one bit. We could use a little more jingoism these days — self-censure and cynicism have outweighed chest-thumping disdain for anti-Americanism for far too long.
The son of a blinded soldier, Toby Keith never served in the military, a self-satisfied point raised by some on the left to question his work during that period as little more than opportunism preying on the emotion of those years. This is a grievous misreading of the man. First, his songs probably netted the Army a couple extra corps in recruitment. But more than that, having grown up watching and listening to Keith as the party boy, the game but aging cowboy, and the neighborhood lush, I’m grateful that there was one (reluctant) culture warrior who had a sense of humor. He managed to demonstrate a lust for life in locations and situations that naturally aroused the American public’s imagination.
Toby Keith achieved what only the best country singers do: providing the songs that come to mind when fighting, loving, or saying goodbye.
R.I.P.
