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Toby Keith on Barry White Cover

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Toby Keith photo courtesy of Show Dog Nashville.


June 25, 2008 — Toby Keith shocked a lot of people when he showed up on the new Wayman Tisdale jazz album singing a remake of the Barry White classic "Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up." After all, a country guy doing soul isn’t something that happens everyday.

But there are some reasons that it makes sense: Toby and Wayman are both Oklahomans. And their life stories are somewhat similar: Toby is a former semi-pro football player who sings music for a living; Wayman is an ex-basketball pro who now earns his paycheck performing.

Ultimately, Toby figured he had nothing to lose by taking a shot at the song, so he drove up to Tulsa and added his vocal to the track in Wayman’s studio.

"I can sing anything," Toby told the Canadian Press. "I like all kinds of music. I like to experiment. If I'd have got up there and it wouldn't have worked, we wouldn't have released it. But it worked really good."

Surprising though it might be, Barry White’s gotten some other notoriety in recent years in country circles. "No Rush," from Josh Turner’s Your Man album, was referred to by some Music Row insiders as "the Barry White country song." And Carolina Rain, which earned an Academy of Country Music award nomination earlier this year, references the late balladeer in its new single, "American Radio."

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