Country music star Toby Keith, who died last month after battling stomach cancer, was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame despite a ban on choosing artists in the year of their death, the Country Music Association said Monday.
The introduction is progressing for technical reasons: voting ended on February 2, three days before the singer’s death on February 5 at the age of 62.
Hours after association officials learned of Keith’s death, the artist chargeable for hits resembling “Who’s your daddy?” AND “Made in America,” received the results of the vote in which Keith was selected as the candidate.
“My heart sank that Tuesday afternoon knowing we missed the opportunity to tell Toby while he was still with us,” said Sarah Trahern, executive director of the Country Music Association, while the group announced new participants on Monday.
It is not uncommon for hall of fame inductees to be added posthumously, but the association’s rules specifically prohibit the selection of artists in the year of their death. “It doesn’t apply this year,” Trahern said.
With a catalog spanning both traditional honky-tonk and pop-country, Keith has released 20 chart-topping country singles over his three-decade career. He was a political lightning rod at times, and many will remember Keith, who wrote or co-wrote much of his material for his post-9/11 song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American),” which proclaimed that putting a “boot up your ass” was ” “the American way.”
Selected by an anonymous panel of voters, Keith will join greater than 150 figures who’ve helped shape country music, including: Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley and Charley Pride. The other two hall of fame additions announced Monday are musicians John Anderson and James Burton, who will be inducted together with Keith in October at the CMA Theater in Nashville.
