‘Cowboy’ song
Toby Keith celebrates the 25th anniversary of his breakout hit.
Toby Keith’s whole life changed in one night in a hotel bathroom in Dodge City, Kansas.
“A guy said to another guy, ‘In all honesty, you should’ve been a cowboy,’ when a girl didn’t dance with him in his hunting clothes. And I thought, ‘Man, that sounds like a song idea,’ and it was all over me,” Keith recalled earlier this month.
“I went back and we were all two hunters to a room, and my roommate was Freddie Cortez. He’s passed away now, but he used to own Chastain's and a bunch of country bars in town. Freddie went to sleep, and I didn’t want to wake him ’cause he was hateful when you’d wake him up. I went in the bathroom, shut the door, wrote it down and put it in my bag and went hunting the next day. Came home, revisited it, and said ‘I’m gonna record this song.’
“It’s the foundation for me of everything.”
Released to radio in February 1993, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” was the singer-songwriter’s debut single, and it galloped up the country charts, ascending to No. 1 in four months. Although it only took Keith about 20 minutes to write it, the tuneful tribute to Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and the Texas Rangers became the most-played country song of that decade and set the Oklahoma native on a multiplatinumselling, hall of fame music career.
The Norman resident, 56, is celebrating this year the 25th anniversary of his breakout hit, and the festivities so far have included a national television showcase on the Academy of Country Music Awards and the naming of his annual trek the "Toby Keith Should've Been a Cowboy Tour XXV.”
“I’m giving that song its due. … I’ve never played a show that I didn’t play that song,” Keith told The Oklahoman. “I’ve probably got 15 or 20 No. 1s I don’t play, and I’ve probably got 20 or 30 top 10s I don’t play. I do a two-hour show every night, and I
play a lot of hits and a lot of No. 1s. But I’ve never not played that song— no matter what.”
Proud accomplishment
The 25th birthday of his first chart-topper isn’t the only milestone anniversary the Oklahoma Hall of Famer is marking this year. Keith hosted the 15th Annual Toby Keith & Friends Golf Classic on June 1-2 in his hometown of Norman.
“Fifteen years. I actually have some big donors and celebrities … they’ve been to all 15. It’s pretty crazy. It’s really hard to be that dedicated to show up 15 years in a row,” Keith said backstage at the June 1 “Denim and Diamonds”
pre-golf gala.
“It just shows that we had a void in our community, and I was called upon in my heart to go fill that void. And the community rallied behind me.”
The two-day event raised more than $1.09 million for his namesake foundation’s primary project, the OK Kids Korral, a no-cost home-awayfrom-home for pediatric cancer patients seeking treatment at OU Medical Center. Keith said the facility houses more than 300 families a year.
“We don’t charge anything, so those people come from all over the United States, maybe all over the world, and they stay with us. … All that’s required is that you have a sick kid and you’re across the street and you need a place to stay. We don’t have very many rules,” he said.
“We try to put everybody together under one roof to where all the kids look the
same, all the parents have the same shortcomings at that time, and there’s power in that, therapy in it. It’s the most beautiful thing I think I’ve ever seen, and I’m so proud of it. … It’s one of my greatest feats outside my kids.”
Playing favorites
The 2015 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, who was born in Clinton and grew up in Moore, said he holds his songs in similar regard to his children or beloved pets in that he doesn’t generally play favorites. But “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” holds a special place for the country music hitmaker.
“It’s like my pick of the litter as far as how important it was to changing my life — and a lot of people around me,” he said.
His daughter, Krystal Keith, a singer-songwriter preparing
to release her new EP “Boulder” on July 13, and her “Anyone Else” duet partner Lance Carpenter are opening some of the shows on the “Should’ve Been a Cowboy Tour XXV.”
“You can tell that that song brings so much energy,” she said. “To see the excitement … that he has for getting to kind of honor that song is really cool. It’s really cool for all of us, because obviously that was a turning point for our whole family and crew.”
In April, her dad was joined by fellow Oklahoma superstar Blake Shelton at the ACM Awards in Las Vegas, where they performed a rollicking rendition of Keith’s homage to “Gunsmoke,” cattle drives and campfire songs.
“Blake was on one of my first headline tours when he first broke out, and (from) the interviews we did backstage, he remembered it like a book.
He was revisiting the whole tour, and I’m like, ‘That was 15 years ago,’” Keith said.
But Keith recalled in detail the first time he heard “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” on the radio. “We were almost to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Shania Twain … came running up front and said, ‘You’re on the radio back here.’ It was three artists on a bus, and she said, ‘They’re playing your song on the radio.’ So, I walked back there, and I was like ‘Nah, they’re not.’ And then I was like ‘Yeah, they are,’” he said with a grin.
“I still crank it up when I hear it. I’m around my knucklehead buddies, and it comes on, they’re going, ‘Oh God, can you change the station?’ and I’m going, ‘Turn it up. … Hell with y’all. Let’s roll.’ I made a great 25-year career out of doing what I did that might not have ever got heard had it not been that song.”