Country music sensation Toby Keith is best known for his rousing anthems to the U.S. soldiers serving in the Middle E.
Background
Toby Keith was born Toby Keith Covel on July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Oklahoma, United States. The family moved to Oklahoma City when Keith was young, and it was there he became interested in the musicians who worked in his grandmother's supper club. He got his first guitar at the age of 8, but it would be years before Keith would pursue music as a career. At 6-feet-4 inches, Keith worked in the oil industry and played defensive end with the Oklahoma City Drillers United States Football League (USFL) team.
In 1984, he turned to music full time, playing the honky-tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas with the band Easy Money. A demo tape made the rounds in Nashville, but there were no takers. After catching a show in Oklahoma, Mercury Records President Harold Shedd signed him to Mercury Records. His 1993 debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy," went to No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, and his self-titled debut album was certified platinum.
Education
After graduating from Moore High School; Toby did not go on to college, but went to work in the Oklahoman oil fields with his father.
Career
Keith released his first four studio albums — 1993's “Toby Keith,” 1994's “Boomtown,” 1996's “Blue Moon” and 1997's “Dream Walkin',” as well as a Greatest Hits package for various divisions of Mercury Records before exiting in 1998. These albums all earned gold or higher certification, and produced several chart singles, including his debut “Should've Been a Cowboy,” which topped the Billboard Country Songs chart and was the most played country song of the 1990s. The song has received three million spins since then, according to Broadcast Music Incorporated.
Signed to Nashville DreamWorks in 1998, Keith released his breakthrough single “How Do You Like Me Now?!” that year. This song, the title track to his 1999 album of the same name, was the #1 Billboard Country song of 2000, and one of several chart-toppers during his tenure on DreamWorks Nashville. His next three albums, 2001’s “Pull My Chain,” 2002’s “Unleashed” and 2003’s “Shock'n Y'all,” produced three #1 hits each, and all of the albums were certified multi-platinum. A second Greatest Hits package followed in 2004, and after that, he released “Honkytonk University” in 2005.
When Dreamworks closed in 2005, Keith founded his own label, Show Dog Nashville, which became part of Show Dog-Universal Music in December 2009. He has released five studio albums on this label, 2006's “White Trash with Money,” 2007's “Big Dog Daddy,” 2008's “That Don't Make Me a Bad Guy,” 2009's “American Ride” 2010's “Bullets in the Gun” and 2011’s “Clancy’s Tavern” as well as the compilation “35 Biggest Hits.”
"I was raised in bars. My grandmother had one, and when I was 12 years old I'd go stay with her and that's where I got to watch her band play -- she had a seven or eight-piece band, and I would sit in the kitchen and peek through the door. I was kind of a 12-year-old bottle washer."
Connections
Toby married to Tricia Covel. They have two children: Krystal Keith and Stelen Keith.