Country star Toby Keith died of stomach cancer yesterday at just 62 years old. Keith reached stardom during the country boom of the early ’90s but achieved his greatest notoriety in the wake of 9/11, when his jingoistic songs in support of the Bush administration’s military response to the attack topped the country charts.
Keith’s cowboy-hatted party-hearty persona gave hime some early hits, but he really hit his stride between 1999 and 2004, when 11 of his 13 singles reached No. 1 on the country chart (he had 20 No. 1’s in his career). The most controversial was “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” released in 2002, in which he told America’s enemies, “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Not everyone agreed, but it didn’t hurt him with the country audience, though it embroiled him in feuds with the Dixie Chicks and ABC anchorman Peter Jennings.
Keith wasn’t easy to categorize politically – over the years he backed Bush, then Obama, then Trump. In recent years he went back to the drinking songs that made him popular, along with this 2017 tune that celebrated an herbal inebriant. The video features an appearance by Willie Nelson, who had a No. 1 duet with Keith, “Beer for My Horses,” in 2003.
Fun fact: Keith, who went to work in the oil fields after graduating high school and played semi-pro football before trying his luck in Nashville, had an honorary degree from Villanova University, which he attended briefly in 1979-80.
