Ask American Profile

Toby Keith, Katie Cook, Billy Ocean.

Toby Keith seems to record one hit record after another. Where is he from and how did he get to be a country singer?

—Karen L., Connecticut

Toby Keith, 41, grew up in Moore, Okla., where musicians who played at his grandmother’s supper club inspired him to pick up the guitar. He took a job in the oil fields after graduation, but kept up his music with Easy Money, a band he formed and played with on weekends. When the oil industry slumped, he played two years as a defensive end for the semi-pro Oklahoma City Drillers, then joined the Oklahoma Outlaws of the short-lived USFL. He kept playing music, though, and when the league folded, he put together a demo tape that impressed former Alabama producer Harold Shedd. His 1993 debut album Toby Keith scored three hits. Keith lives with his wife, Tricia, and three children outside Norman, Okla., where he is completing Dream Walkin’ Farms, a thoroughbred breeding and training facility. His newest album, Unleashed, contains the hit single Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (The Angry American), Keith’s reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks.

I have seen Katie Cook host several shows featuring country singers. She is terrific and I love her personality. What can you tell me about her?
—Charlotte T., Missouri

Katie Cook grew up in the country music world. Her father, Roger Cook, is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. His country credits include Crystal Gayle’s Talking in Your Sleep. On the pop side, he wrote The Fortunes’ Here Comes That Rainy Day Feeling Again and the theme song for the popular Coca-Cola commercial, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. Katie, who was born in London and moved to Nashville at age 5, is following in her father’s footsteps. The singer-songwiter has a publishing deal with EMI Records. She hosts CMT’s newest interview series MWL Star and Grand Ole Opry Live. Cook became a hairdresser after high school and opened her own beauty shop, where most of her clients were musicians, producers, and writers. She worked on her own music, then moved back to England where she formed the country-tinged pop group Reno, which released an album on Curb Records before breaking up.

Whatever happened to Billy Ocean? He sang the hit Caribbean Queen.
—Vivian H., Arkansas

Though the Caribbean-born singer faded away from American radio after his enormous success in the 1980s, he never stopped making music. He’s made a number of albums and still tours, though he’s seen primarily in Europe these days. Recently he was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the University of Westminster. Now 53, Ocean was born Leslie Charles in Trinidad, though he moved to England when he was 8 years old. He started performing at London clubs as a teenager, scored a hit song there in 1974 under the name Scorched Earth, and continued to have moderate success as a songwriter and singer throughout the 1970s. Caribbean Queen was his breakthrough song. Released in 1982, it became a hit all over the world. The lyrics were altered slightly in regional versions of the song, titled African Queen and European Queen, and those versions were just as successful.

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