RIP Toby Keith
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62 years old....
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/arts/music/toby-keith-dead.html
Toby Keith, the larger-than-life singer-songwriter of No. 1 country hits like “Who’s Your Daddy?” and “Made in America” and one of the biggest stars to come out of Nashville in three decades, died on Monday. He was 62.
His death was announced on his official website, which said that he passed “peacefully” surrounded by his family. Elaine Schock, Mr. Keith’s publicist, said in an email that he died in Oklahoma, where he had lived his entire life.
The singer announced in the summer of 2022 that he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was being treated with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
In a recent interview with KWTV News 9, an Oklahoma-based TV station, Mr. Keith, who played a run of shows in Las Vegas in December, said he was still in treatment. “Cancer is a roller coaster,” he said. “You just sit here and wait on it to go away — it may not ever go away.” Keith said that his Christian faith was helping him get through the treatment and the potential dark outcome.
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That's awful young. RIP.
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The interview:
Link to video -
Ugh… He was one of Karla’s favorites.
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Cancer sucks.
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RIP. Makes me consider starting the collection of my Social Security payments next month. I'm the same age as Toby. How long is the break even if I wait 5 more years? Will I be alive to collect? Will I live long enough to break even? These are vexing questions.
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I just read something interesting. Apparently he was a Steelers fan and owned three seats from the old Three Rivers Stadium that he had installed in his gym.
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One of my favorite Toby Keith stories...
When Toby was starting out, he played the TLO Circuit. In the music biz, that's Texas-Louisiana-Oklahoma, mostly Oklahoma, NE Texas and NW Louisiana. There are some absolute dives in that part of the world.
Remember that scene in The Blues Brothers where they played a bar with chicken wire in front of the stage? Well, there are bars like that on the TLO circuit.
Bar fights are not uncommon. Whole bar fights do rarely happen, but they do.
Toby had just started to gain a little traction, enough to hire a manager, but he still was playing the circuit. One night, the bar they were playing erupted into a full bar fight. The manager is trying to get the band out of there, so they all head for the door. Toby, being a big guy, led the pack and the manager figured the safest place was behind Toby.
Some idiot was dumb enough or drunk enough to sucker punch Toby Keith.
The manager said Toby grabbed the guy with one hand and beat him with the other. The guy was screaming he'd had enough, when Toby stopped just long enough to look at the guy and tell him, "I'll let you know when you've had enough".
Then he hit him again, put the guy's lights out and dropped him like a sack of potatoes...
