The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

FACING CRITICS AND FORWARD OPERATING BASES, TOBY KEITH GAVE TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE TO THE TROOPS WHO CALLED HIM FAMILY. The critics called him a warmonger. The soldiers called him family. Only one of them ever met him. Toby Keith didn’t have to go. He was already a superstar — private jets, sold-out arenas, number one hits. Instead, he got on military transport planes. Flew into Iraq. Afghanistan. Kuwait. Places where the stage was a flatbed truck and the audience carried rifles. Not once. Not for a photo op. 11 USO tours. Over 285 shows. Nearly 256,000 troops. More than any artist of his generation. He did it for his father — H.K. Covel, an Army veteran who lost his right eye in service, who raised his kids to respect the flag. When his dad died in 2001, six months before 9/11, Toby wrote “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” in 20 minutes. Critics tore him apart for it. Radio hosts called him angry. Hollywood called him worse. He never apologized. He just kept flying back. Soldiers remember him eating in the mess halls, not backstage. Playing acoustic sets on forward operating bases too dangerous for full crews. Coming back year after year, even when the cameras stopped following. Then came the diagnosis. Stomach cancer. He fought it quietly for two years — and still stood on stage in 2023, thin and unbroken, singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In.” He passed in February 2024. The Country Music Hall of Fame called his name that same year. He never wore the uniform. But ask any soldier who was there. Some people salute with their hand. Toby Keith saluted with 20 years of his life.

Toby Keith Never Wore the Uniform—But for Two Decades, He Carried a Piece of Home to Those Who Did

“THE CRITICS CALLED HIM A WARMONGER. THE SOLDIERS CALLED HIM FAMILY. ONLY ONE OF THEM EVER MET HIM.”

The headline is deliberately confrontational, yet the contrast captures one of the great divisions surrounding Toby Keith. To some critics, his most patriotic music sounded too angry, too blunt, and too closely connected to the national mood that followed September 11. To many American service members, however, he was not a distant celebrity expressing opinions from a comfortable stage. He was the performer who repeatedly boarded military aircraft and traveled to places most entertainers would never be expected to visit.

By the time his work with the United Service Organizations was complete, Toby had participated in 18 USO tours and performed for more than 250,000 service members. The USO reported that he appeared in 17 countries and delivered nearly 300 performances, including visits to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and remote military locations far from conventional concert venues.

He did not need those journeys to advance his career. Toby was already filling arenas, recording major hits, and enjoying the privileges of international fame. Yet he continued returning to military communities, sometimes performing in hangars, gyms, forward operating bases, and locations where security conditions could change without warning. Department of Defense and Army accounts documented his repeated appearances before deployed personnel, including smaller acoustic performances at isolated outposts.

This was not one carefully photographed visit. It became a commitment measured in years.

The roots of that commitment reached back to Toby’s father, Hubert “H.K.” Covel Jr., an Army veteran who lost his right eye during his service. Toby later explained that his father taught the family to respect veterans and continued displaying the American flag at home. After H.K. died in 2001 and the September 11 attacks followed months later, Toby wrote “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” in an intense burst that reportedly lasted about 20 minutes.

The song became both a rallying cry and a source of controversy. Its language was intentionally forceful, and some listeners regarded it as an expression of patriotic anger while others criticized its aggressive tone. Toby understood that reaction was coming, but he defended the song as something written for American service members and as an attempt to express the emotions of a wounded country.

What mattered most to the troops was not simply what he sang. It was that he arrived.

Accounts of his tours describe a performer who visited military personnel where they worked and lived, met them personally, and continued traveling even after the novelty of celebrity trips to overseas bases had faded. The relationship became less about politics than presence. He could not understand every burden carried by the people before him, but he could offer music, conversation, laughter, and a brief reminder of home.

Some people salute with their hands. Toby Keith offered twenty years of his time.

Then came his private struggle with stomach cancer. He revealed that he had undergone treatment beginning in 2021, yet he continued returning to music when his health allowed. In September 2023, he delivered an emotional performance of “Don’t Let the Old Man In” at the People’s Choice Country Awards. He later completed three sold-out Las Vegas concerts in December 2023—his final public shows before his death on February 5, 2024.

Later that year, Toby Keith was formally inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, confirming his place among the artists who permanently changed the direction and character of the genre.

He never wore a military uniform, and he never claimed the sacrifices that belonged to those who did. His contribution was different. He kept showing up with a guitar, an unmistakable voice, and the belief that the people serving far from home deserved to know they had not been forgotten.

Critics debated his words.

The soldiers remembered his presence.

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FROM GROWING UP ON ANNE MURRAY’S RECORDS IN ALBERTA TO SHARING THE STAGE DECADES LATER, K.D. LANG’S LIFELONG ADMIRATION CAME FULL CIRCLE. K.D. lang took her Hall of Fame award from Anne Murray in 2013 and told her, “I still have a crush on you.” It happened at the Juno Awards in Regina, April 21, 2013, on national television. The woman handing lang the honour was one of the idols she’d grown up on out in Consort, Alberta. Murray said of her that night, “I loved her sense of fun, her spunk, her gumption, and she could sing.” Six years earlier they had already sung together. For Duets: Friends & Legends, Murray re-recorded seventeen of her own songs with her favourite female singers, and the one she cut with lang was “A Love Song.” Emmylou Harris, Shania Twain, Olivia Newton-John and Celine Dion were all on that record. Reviewers still singled out how cleanly lang’s voice sat against Murray’s. Eighteen years after that album, on October 27, 2025, the Grand Ole Opry House filled up for a tribute night called The Music of My Life. Murray was 80, retired from the stage since 2008, and she stayed down in the audience with more than a dozen of her family. One after another the singers took her hits. Then k.d. lang walked out and sang “A Love Song” — the one the two of them had recorded together — back to the woman who had been her idol since Alberta.

GROWING UP SIDE BY SIDE AS YOUNG MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, LORETTA LYNN AND BETTY SUE FORGED A BOND THAT SURVIVED POVERTY, FAME, AND AN UNBEARABLE LOSS. LORETTA LYNN BECAME A MOTHER AT 16. DECADES LATER, SHE ADMITTED SHE AND HER DAUGHTER HAD ALMOST RAISED EACH OTHER. Betty Sue was Loretta’s first child. She arrived before Loretta had finished growing up herself. While most girls her age were thinking about school dances and the future, Loretta was keeping house, working in the garden and caring for a baby. Three more children followed quickly. Betty Sue became the feisty little “boss” of her younger siblings, while her young mother tried to build a home from almost nothing. Looking back, Loretta said, “In many ways it felt like we raised each other.” As the years passed, their bond changed. Betty Sue became a songwriter, helped her mother with the ranch and worked beside her in entertainment. But more than that, she became the person Loretta called every day. Not simply a daughter. A best friend. When Betty Sue died in 2013, Loretta had already survived poverty, a difficult marriage, the death of her son Jack and six decades in the music business. None of it prepared her for losing her firstborn. “Part of my heart died when she left us,” Loretta later wrote. Loretta became a mother at 16. But when Betty Sue died, she learned that no matter how old a child becomes, a mother never stops seeing the baby who first gave her that name.

FROM A TEN-DOLLAR FAIRGROUND GIG TO A FORTY-YEAR PROMISE, FOUR BOYS FROM VIRGINIA HONORED A HANDSHAKE WITH JOHNNY CASH THAT CHANGED COUNTRY MUSIC FOREVER.They didn’t get there alone. They never could have. And for most of their lives, they didn’t even know how to repay the man who got them there.They were four boys from Staunton, Virginia — Don Reid, Harold Reid, Phil Balsley, Lew DeWitt. A quartet with church-pew harmonies and no audience. They asked $10 a show. Sometimes they paid $10 just for the privilege of singing.Then there was Johnny Cash. The Man in Black. The one who heard them at the Salem Fairgrounds in the summer of 1963 and hired them on a handshake. No contract. No paperwork. Just a hand extended to four unknown boys.He took them on tour for eight and a half years. He put them on At Folsom Prison. He gave them a weekly spot on his ABC show. And they never asked why a legend had bet his stage on four nobodies from Virginia.Then came September 12, 2003. Cash was gone. Don Reid was 58. And the handshake from a Virginia fairground was forty years old. Some debts get paid in money. The ones that matter get paid in the rest of your life. So what did Don Reid finally understand at Cash’s grave — and why did the Statlers spend the next twenty years singing his name in every show?

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Country

FACING CRITICS AND FORWARD OPERATING BASES, TOBY KEITH GAVE TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE TO THE TROOPS WHO CALLED HIM FAMILY. The critics called him a warmonger. The soldiers called him family. Only one of them ever met him. Toby Keith didn’t have to go. He was already a superstar — private jets, sold-out arenas, number one hits. Instead, he got on military transport planes. Flew into Iraq. Afghanistan. Kuwait. Places where the stage was a flatbed truck and the audience carried rifles. Not once. Not for a photo op. 11 USO tours. Over 285 shows. Nearly 256,000 troops. More than any artist of his generation. He did it for his father — H.K. Covel, an Army veteran who lost his right eye in service, who raised his kids to respect the flag. When his dad died in 2001, six months before 9/11, Toby wrote “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” in 20 minutes. Critics tore him apart for it. Radio hosts called him angry. Hollywood called him worse. He never apologized. He just kept flying back. Soldiers remember him eating in the mess halls, not backstage. Playing acoustic sets on forward operating bases too dangerous for full crews. Coming back year after year, even when the cameras stopped following. Then came the diagnosis. Stomach cancer. He fought it quietly for two years — and still stood on stage in 2023, thin and unbroken, singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In.” He passed in February 2024. The Country Music Hall of Fame called his name that same year. He never wore the uniform. But ask any soldier who was there. Some people salute with their hand. Toby Keith saluted with 20 years of his life.

Country

FROM GROWING UP ON ANNE MURRAY’S RECORDS IN ALBERTA TO SHARING THE STAGE DECADES LATER, K.D. LANG’S LIFELONG ADMIRATION CAME FULL CIRCLE. K.D. lang took her Hall of Fame award from Anne Murray in 2013 and told her, “I still have a crush on you.” It happened at the Juno Awards in Regina, April 21, 2013, on national television. The woman handing lang the honour was one of the idols she’d grown up on out in Consort, Alberta. Murray said of her that night, “I loved her sense of fun, her spunk, her gumption, and she could sing.” Six years earlier they had already sung together. For Duets: Friends & Legends, Murray re-recorded seventeen of her own songs with her favourite female singers, and the one she cut with lang was “A Love Song.” Emmylou Harris, Shania Twain, Olivia Newton-John and Celine Dion were all on that record. Reviewers still singled out how cleanly lang’s voice sat against Murray’s. Eighteen years after that album, on October 27, 2025, the Grand Ole Opry House filled up for a tribute night called The Music of My Life. Murray was 80, retired from the stage since 2008, and she stayed down in the audience with more than a dozen of her family. One after another the singers took her hits. Then k.d. lang walked out and sang “A Love Song” — the one the two of them had recorded together — back to the woman who had been her idol since Alberta.

Country

GROWING UP SIDE BY SIDE AS YOUNG MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, LORETTA LYNN AND BETTY SUE FORGED A BOND THAT SURVIVED POVERTY, FAME, AND AN UNBEARABLE LOSS. LORETTA LYNN BECAME A MOTHER AT 16. DECADES LATER, SHE ADMITTED SHE AND HER DAUGHTER HAD ALMOST RAISED EACH OTHER. Betty Sue was Loretta’s first child. She arrived before Loretta had finished growing up herself. While most girls her age were thinking about school dances and the future, Loretta was keeping house, working in the garden and caring for a baby. Three more children followed quickly. Betty Sue became the feisty little “boss” of her younger siblings, while her young mother tried to build a home from almost nothing. Looking back, Loretta said, “In many ways it felt like we raised each other.” As the years passed, their bond changed. Betty Sue became a songwriter, helped her mother with the ranch and worked beside her in entertainment. But more than that, she became the person Loretta called every day. Not simply a daughter. A best friend. When Betty Sue died in 2013, Loretta had already survived poverty, a difficult marriage, the death of her son Jack and six decades in the music business. None of it prepared her for losing her firstborn. “Part of my heart died when she left us,” Loretta later wrote. Loretta became a mother at 16. But when Betty Sue died, she learned that no matter how old a child becomes, a mother never stops seeing the baby who first gave her that name.

Country

FROM A TEN-DOLLAR FAIRGROUND GIG TO A FORTY-YEAR PROMISE, FOUR BOYS FROM VIRGINIA HONORED A HANDSHAKE WITH JOHNNY CASH THAT CHANGED COUNTRY MUSIC FOREVER.They didn’t get there alone. They never could have. And for most of their lives, they didn’t even know how to repay the man who got them there.They were four boys from Staunton, Virginia — Don Reid, Harold Reid, Phil Balsley, Lew DeWitt. A quartet with church-pew harmonies and no audience. They asked $10 a show. Sometimes they paid $10 just for the privilege of singing.Then there was Johnny Cash. The Man in Black. The one who heard them at the Salem Fairgrounds in the summer of 1963 and hired them on a handshake. No contract. No paperwork. Just a hand extended to four unknown boys.He took them on tour for eight and a half years. He put them on At Folsom Prison. He gave them a weekly spot on his ABC show. And they never asked why a legend had bet his stage on four nobodies from Virginia.Then came September 12, 2003. Cash was gone. Don Reid was 58. And the handshake from a Virginia fairground was forty years old. Some debts get paid in money. The ones that matter get paid in the rest of your life. So what did Don Reid finally understand at Cash’s grave — and why did the Statlers spend the next twenty years singing his name in every show?