His family moved to Moore,…. His grandmother owned a supper club and Keith became interested in the musicians who came there to play. He got his first guitar at the age of 8. Keith attended Moore High School where he played on the football team.
Keith graduated from Moore High School and, in , went to work as a derrick hand in the booming oil fields of Oklahoma. He worked his way up to become an operation manager.
At the age of 20, he formed the Easy Money band and they played local bars as he continued to work in the oil industry.
At times, he would have to leave in the middle of a gig if he was paged to work in the oil field. In , the oil industry in Oklahoma began a rapid decline and Keith soon found himself unemployed. 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.
After two years with the Drillers, Keith decided to try music full time. His family and friends were doubtful he would succeed, but in , Easy Money began playing the honky tonk circuit in Oklahoma and Texas. The band cut a single titled Blue Moon and the song received some airplay on local radio stations in Oklahoma. In , Keith went to Nashville, Tennessee. Keith 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. Unlike many successful Oklahoma musicians, he has made the Sooner State his headquarters, living near the town where he was raised.
Under Mercury Records he had a modestly successful s career, but it skyrocketed after he changed to the Dreamworks Records label. By the end of he had twenty Number One Billboard Country hits, with eight from the Dreamworks period. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law. Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
He cut a few records for local indie labels, and his demo tape eventually found its way to one-time Alabama producer Harold Shedd , who helped Keith land a deal with Mercury. Keith 's self-titled debut album was released in and made him an out-of-the-box success with its chart-topping single "Should've Been a Cowboy. Released in , Dream Walkin' marked his first collaboration with prolific producer James Stroud , with whom he would work regularly from then on.
However, Keith longed for an even bigger breakthrough, and he was growing dissatisfied with Mercury's promotional efforts. In , he left the label and followed Stroud over to the Nashville division of DreamWorks. Overall, the album had a rough, brash attitude that helped give Keith a stronger identity as a performer.
In the meantime, Keith became more visible in the mainstream media, appearing in 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 , his follow-up album, Pull My Chain , became his first to top the country charts and also his first Top Ten pop album. Keith was already a burgeoning superstar when he recorded "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue The Angry American " in the summer of A raging response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the song struck a fierce chord with aggressively patriotic listeners, while others condemned it as knee-jerk jingoism.
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 All of this set the stage for Unleashed , which sold like hotcakes upon its release later in , debuting at number one on both the country and pop charts.
In , Keith released 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 followed in May , the same year that Mercury released 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 released the label's first record, the number two hit White Trash with Money. A year later he released Big Dog Daddy , the first album he produced himself, and also a holiday album, A Classic Christmas.
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