On this day · 65 years ago · 1961
65 Years Ago Today: Toby Keith, Who Got His First Guitar at 8 in His Grandmother's Supper Club, Was Born
Before the oil fields, before Nashville, before 20 number one country hits, Toby Keith was a kid doing odd jobs at his grandmother's supper club so he could get near the bandstand.
By Chet, Country desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Toby Keith Covel was born July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Oklahoma, and got his first guitar at age 8 after hanging around the bandstand at his grandmother's Fort Smith, Arkansas supper club. He went on to chart 20 number one country singles and, in 2013, Takamine released the EF250TK, a signature acoustic-electric built to the specs of his longtime workhorse guitar. He died in 2024.
A supper club in Fort Smith
Toby Keith Covel was born July 8, 1961, in Clinton, Oklahoma, to Carolyn Joan and Hubert K. Covel Jr., per Wikipedia's account of his life. Before the family settled in Moore, Oklahoma, young Keith spent childhood summers visiting his grandmother in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she owned a supper club. He did odd jobs around the place and started climbing onto the bandstand with the musicians who played there. He got his first guitar at age 8.
Oil fields, football, and a band on the side
Keith's path to Nashville wasn't a straight line. After graduating Moore High School, where he'd played defensive end on the football team, he worked as a derrick hand in Oklahoma's oil fields, working his way up to supervisor while playing bars and roadhouses at night with a band he'd formed with friends, the Easy Money Band. When the oil industry collapsed in 1982, he tried out for the professional Oklahoma Outlaws, fell short, played semi-pro football instead, and kept the band going on the honky-tonk circuit through Oklahoma and Texas. He eventually went to Nashville and busked along Music Row before producer Harold Shedd signed him after a chance demo tape reached him through a flight attendant.
Should've Been a Cowboy and two decades of number ones
Keith's 1993 debut single, Should've Been a Cowboy, hit number one on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and launched a career that ran to 20 number one country hits, 22 more top-10 singles, and 19 studio albums selling more than 40 million copies worldwide. He was nominated for seven Grammy Awards and, in January 2021, received the National Medal of Arts.
The guitar Takamine built around him
By 2013, Keith's live and studio rig centered on a Takamine acoustic-electric he'd played for years, the TF250SMCSB. That January, per Premier Guitar's coverage of the launch, Takamine introduced the EF250TK Toby Keith Signature model, built to his specs: a full jumbo cutaway body, solid spruce top with scalloped X bracing, flame maple back and sides, abalone and mother-of-pearl fingerboard inlays, and Keith's own signature on the heel cap. It's a fitting bookend to a guitar story that started with a kid doing chores for stage time, four decades earlier, in a Fort Smith supper club.
Keith died in 2024
Keith died February 5, 2024, from stomach cancer, at age 62. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame within hours of his death, with the formal medallion ceremony that October. Whatever exact string gauge he ran on that Takamine isn't publicly documented, but a coated phosphor bronze light set is the standard modern match for a full-bodied jumbo acoustic-electric in that role.
EJ16 Phosphor Bronze Light (.012–.053)
Why this one: No specific gauge is publicly documented for Keith's Takamine, but a light-gauge phosphor bronze set is the standard modern choice for a full-bodied jumbo acoustic-electric in his register.
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