(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Country superstar Toby Keith—who refused to cave to media pressure at President Donald Trump’s inaugural ball and helped launch the career of Taylor Swift, only to throw her under the bus for $330 million—died Monday following a more than two-year bout with stomach cancer that had weakened but not waylaid the prolific hitmaker.
Keith “passed away peacefully … surrounded by his family,” a message posted on his website said. “He fought his fight with grace and courage.”
Keith kept performing until the end, playing three sold out shows in Las Vegas in December, which he later described via Instagram as a “damn good way to end the year.”
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He received his cancer diagnosis in Fall 2021 but did not go public with it until the following June, after undergoing six months of intensive treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
“I need time to breathe, recover and relax,” he tweeted. “I’m looking forward to spending this time with my family. But I will see fans sooner than later. I can’t wait.”
— Toby Keith (@tobykeith) June 12, 2022
In September 2023, Keith was honored at the People’s Choice Country Awards, where he given the first Country Music Icon Award, People magazine reported.
Receiving the award from Blake Shelton, Keith maintained his keen sense of ironic humor while remarking on his physical transformation.
“Bet you thought you’d never see me in skinny jeans,” he quipped.
“I want to thank the almighty for allowing me to be here tonight,” he added. “You’ve been riding shotgun with me for a little while.”
It was one of the last in a long list of accolades for Keith, whose 19 studio releases yielded 20 No. 1 singles and some 40 million album sales.
In January 2021, a week before leaving office, then-President Donald Trump awarded the National Medal of Arts to Keith, who was one of just a handful of popular recording artists who had performed four years earlier at Trump’s inauguration ceremonies.
The world just lost a true American Patriot.🇺🇸🇺🇸
Country Star #TobyKeith has passed away at age 62 after battling stomach cancer. What is your favorite Toby Keith song? pic.twitter.com/P5iyhbCm4u— Trump Girl 🇺🇲🦅🇺🇲 (@MAGA__Patriot) February 6, 2024
Keith—who also performed for presidents Bush and Obama, and did more than 200 shows for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan—stood steadfast by the new president as leftist media waged a campaign to get him and other artists to back out.
“I don’t apologize for performing for our country or military,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
Keith’s patriotic streak, however, was no mystery to his fans. In 2001’s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American),” written in reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as well as the personal grief of losing his father, Keith uncharacteristically cast aside his wry turns of phrase for raw and unfiltered emotional grit:
“Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage / This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage / And you’ll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A / ‘Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass. It’s the American way.”
Toby Keith: “Never apologize for being patriotic. Fuck em.”
pic.twitter.com/vKuPhjQPZb— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) February 6, 2024
If country music’s golden age came a generation earlier—with the self-destructive rebellion of figures like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and George Jones—Keith was a major figure in its platinum age, when a group of talented artists like chart-toppers Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw brought the same twang and Southern sensibilities, but with a greater business savvy.
The Oklahoma native’s offbeat observations about life’s adversities—both big and small—often preserved a sort of wistful longing for bygone times.
Whether in the opening strains of 1993’s “Should Have Been a Cowboy,” off his self-titled debut album, which found him idealizing the lifestyle of old TV westerns like Gunsmoke; or in “As Good As I Once Was,” off 2005’s Honkytonk University—which found Keith, entering into his mid-40s, reflecting back on his youthful prime—his songs echoed his determination to make the most of what life had bestowed.
Yet, Keith also took time to rejoice in the simple pleasures—as in the iconic ode he recorded to everyone’s favorite party accessory, the “Red Solo Cup,” off 2011’s Clancy’s Tavern, or the sense of camaraderie and community found at a favorite watering hole in 2003’s “I Love This Bar.”
Unfortunately for Keith, an offer to turn the latter song into a restaurant chain similar to Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurants proved too good to be true.
The I Love This Bar & Grill chain, launched in 2005 saw many of its restaurants closing by 2015 amid financial turmoil.
It was subsequently discovered that the man behind the chain, ex-Mobster Frank Capri, who was supposed to be in the Federal Witness Protection Program, was using the restaurants as a front to commit wire fraud and to bilk investors out of millions for restaurants that never opened.
Keith denied having any business involvement with the venture beyond licensing his name.
However, he is estimated to have a net worth of around $400 million for his wife, Tricia Lucus, and their three adult children.
In addition to owning his own liquor brand, Wild Shot mezcal liquor, Keith was an early investor in Big Machine Records. Its biggest success story was Taylor Swift, who was 15 when she released her first album on the label in 2006.
“You’re in the room with him and you can feel it, there’s a power there,” a starstruck Swift told Nashville’s WSMV4 about Keith, as reported by Rolling Stone. “And you’re just like ‘oh my God.’ I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I don’t see him and are just like, ‘Oh my God that’s Toby Keith.’”
Keith, in turn, stood in awe of Swift’s meteoric rise, telling the Chicago Tribune in 2016 that she had left him financially secure—and then some.
“If I just took the royalties I had off of that, I wouldn’t have to do anything else,” he said. “A bunch of people could live off that.”
Much to Swift’s chagrin, the label was sold to notorious producer Scooter Braun for a reported $330 million in June 2019.
His investment partners in the company Ithaca Holdings, according to Swift herself, included leftist billionaire George Soros and the globalist Carlyle Group, whose co-founder (and new Baltimore Orioles co-owner) David Rubenstein hosted Biden last year for Thanksgiving.
FLASHBACK: Taylor Swift: “After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital and the Carlyle Group,” pic.twitter.com/CLQE7bgQcX
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 30, 2024
Although Swift, as of Tuesday afternoon, had yet to offer any public condolences on Twitter, several other A-list celebrities took to social media to convey their grief, Fox News reported.
“Even though I knew about your battle these last few months I still never imagined this day,” Shelton wrote on his Instagram.
“Anyone who knew you knows what I mean,” he added. “You were the toughest man I ever met.”
Billy Ray Cyrus recalled touring “several times around the globe” with Keith.
“He was always the kindest… sweetest gentle giant of an outlaw one could ever hope to entertain and make music with,” Cyrus said in a statement.
“Raising a Red Cup this morning and saying a prayer,” he added. “Heaven’s a honkytonk tonight.”
Military veterans, including Army Infantryman Joshua Stanley, also weighed in among the chorus of bereaved performers and other public figures, recalling Keith’s determination to put on a good show for his audience no matter what.
“I saw him perform at Kandahar Air Field, just him and one backup singer,” Stanley tweeted. “He was clearly exhausted from traveling all the bases but still wanted to give us a good show, which he did. God bless you, sir. Thank you for caring. Rest easy.”
I saw him perform at Kandahar Air Field, just him and one backup singer. He was clearly exhausted from traveling all the bases but still wanted to give us a good show, which he did. God bless you, sir. Thank you for caring. Rest easy.
— Joshua Stanley (@joshua__stanley) February 6, 2024
