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Toby Keith worked as a derrick hand in the oil fields. Learn 50 interesting facts about Keith.
1. Toby Keith Covel best known as Toby Keith, is an American country music singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor.
2. Keith released his first four studio albums-1993's Toby Keith, 1994's Boomtown, 1996's Blue Moon and 1997's Dream Walkin', plus a Greatest Hits package for various divisions of Mercury Records before leaving Mercury 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 country charts and was the most played country song of the 1990s. The song has received three million spins since its release, according to Broadcast Music Incorporated.
3. Signed to DreamWorks Records Nashville 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 Number One country song of 2000, and one of several chart-toppers during his tenure on DreamWorks Nashville.
4. His next three albums, Pull My Chain, Unleashed, and Shock'n Y'all, produced three more Number Ones each, and all of the albums were certified multi-platinum.
5. A second Greatest Hits package followed in 2004, and after that, he released Honkytonk University.
6. When DreamWorks closed in 2005, Keith founded the label Show Dog Nashville, which merged with Universal South Records to become Show Dog-Universal Music in December 2009.
7. Keith also made his acting debut in 2006, starring in the film Broken Bridges.
8. He co-starred with comedian Rodney Carrington in the 2008 film Beer for My Horses, inspired by his song of the same name.
9. Overall, Keith has released seventeen studio albums, two Christmas albums, and four compilation albums.
10. He has also charted sixty-one singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including twenty Number One hits and twenty-one additional Top Ten hits.
11. His longest-lasting Number One hits are "Beer for My Horses" (a 2003 duet with Willie Nelson) and "As Good as I Once Was" (2005), at six weeks each. He has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide.
12. Keith was born in Clinton, Oklahoma, the son of Carolyn Joan and Hubert K. Covel, Jr.
13. He has a sister and a brother.
14. The family lived in Fort Smith, Arkansas, for a few years when Keith was in grade school, but moved to Moore, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City) when he was still young.
15. Before the family moved to Moore, he visited his grandmother in Fort Smith during the summers. His grandmother owned Billie Garner's Supper Club in Fort Smith, where Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play.
16. He did odd jobs around the supper club and started getting up on the bandstand to play with the band.
17. He got his first guitar at the age of eight.
18. After the family moved to Moore, Keith attended Highland West Junior High and Moore High School, where he played defensive end on the football team.
19. Keith graduated from Moore High School and worked as a derrick hand in the oil fields. He worked his way up to become an operation manager.
20. At the age of 20, he and his friends Scott Webb, Keith Cory, David "Yogi" Vowell and Danny Smith, with a few others, formed the Easy Money Band, which played at local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry.
21. At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a concert if he was paged to work in the oil field.
22. Toby Keith played defensive end for the 1980 Oklahoma Sooners but never saw the field before dropping out to play semi-professional football in OKC.
23. In 1982, the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed.
24. He fell back on his football training and played defensive end with the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers while continuing to perform with his band.
25. He then returned to focus once again on music. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but, in 1984, Easy Money (various other band members included Mike Barnes, T.A. Brauer and David Saylors) began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas.
26. In the early 1990s, Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee, where he hung out and busked on Music Row and at a place called Houndogs. He distributed copies of a demo tape the band had made to the many record companies in the city. There was no interest by any of the record labels, and Keith returned home feeling depressed.
27. He had promised himself and God to have a recording contract by the time he was 30 years old or give up on music as a career.
28. A flight attendant and fan of his gave a copy of Keith's demo tape to Harold Shedd, a Mercury Records executive, while he was traveling on a flight she was working. Shedd enjoyed what he heard, went to see Keith perform live and then signed him to a recording contract with Mercury.
29. His debut single, "Should've Been a Cowboy", went to number 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1993, in addition to reaching number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100.
30. By the end of the decade, "Should've Been a Cowboy" received more than three million spins at radio, thus making it the most-played country song of the 1990s.
31. Certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of one million copies, the album produced three more Top 5 hits on the country charts: "He Ain't Worth Missing" at number 5, followed by "A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action" (originally the B-side of "Should've Been a Cowboy") and "Wish I Didn't Know Now" both at number 2.
32. Keith was moved to Polydor Records Nashville and released his next album, Boomtown, in September 1994. Also certified platinum, this album was led off by the number 1 single "Who's That Man". After it, "Upstairs Downtown" and "You Ain't Much Fun" both made Top 10, while "Big Ol' Truck" peaked at number 15.
33. At the end of 1995, he released his first Christmas album, Christmas to Christmas, via Mercury. The album, composed entirely of original songs, produced one chart entry in "Santa I'm Right Here", which reached as high as number 50 based on Christmas airplay.
34. On August 31, 2005, Keith founded a new label, Show Dog Nashville.
35. Keith performed on a series of television advertisements for Telecom USA for that company's discount long distance telephone service 10-10-220.
36. He also starred in Ford commercials, singing original songs such as "Ford Truck Man" and "Field Trip (Look Again)" while driving Ford trucks.
37. Keith made an appearance at the first Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (then NWA-TNA) weekly pay-per-view on June 19, 2002, where his playing of "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" was interrupted by Jeff Jarrett.
38. He would later enter the Gauntlet for the Gold main event, suplexing Jarrett and eliminating him from the match.
39. In 2009, Keith participated in the Comedy Central Roast of Larry the Cable Guy, which aired on March 14, 2009.
40. Keith received the "Colbert Bump" when he appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report.
41. He holds the distinction of being the only musical artist to have received a five star rating from Stephen Colbert on iTunes.
42. Keith furthered this connection when he appeared in Colbert's 2008 Christmas special as a hunter.
43. Keith also made an appearance as a musical guest on the October 27, 2011 episode of the Colbert Report.
44. On October 29, 2011, Keith appeared on Fox Channel's Huckabee with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He played "Bullets in the Gun" and he joined with Huckabee 's house band to play a song at the end of the show.
45. In early 2009, Keith also established a line of clothing, TK Steelman.
46. Keith supports Ally's House, a non-profit organization in Oklahoma designed to aid children with cancer. Of the charity, Keith said: This is a special charity to me. I saw firsthand how a child's cancer diagnosis can devastate a family. Please join me in supporting these kids through Ally's House. We're gonna make it better for the kids.
47. The July 15. 2013, edition of Forbes magazine features Keith on the cover with the caption "Country Music's $500 million man".
48. In 2011, Keith introduced a new drink named "Wild Shot". At first it was only available in Mexico, but now is sold and served in America. It is a featured drink in his restaurant chain, I Love this Bar and Grill.
49. Keith's music career and his various other business ventures have made him one of the wealthiest celebrities in the United States.
50. Keith has written at least one #1 country single over the past 20 years and the partnership between his own label, Show Dog-Universal, and Big Machine Records, which Keith also helped found in 2005.
Source: Wikipedia.org
