Toby Keith’s mother Carolyn was on stage with him in Las Vegas during one of his final concerts, less than two months before his death at the age of 62 Monday.

The Should´ve Been a Cowboy singer-songwriter, who had battled stomach cancer for years, died peacefully Monday surrounded by his family, a statement posted on the country singer’s website read, adding that the musical artist fought his fight with grace and courage.’

Carolyn accompanied the singer onstage during his concert at Dolby Live at the Park MGM Las Vegas on December 12, which was one of the singer’s final set of shows.

In a video published on TMZ, Keith was seen saying, ‘I want to introduce you to somebody, this is my mom – she’s the one that taught me how to sing.’

In the clip, Keith and his mother were seen embracing onstage, with Keith jokingly telling his mother to tell concertgoers to ‘go to hell,’ to the amusement of the crowd.

Toby Keith’s mother Carolyn was on stage with him in Las Vegas during one of his final concerts, less than two months before his death at the age of 62 Monday. Pictured in November in Nashville

Keith said his mother had a major influence on his musical inclinations

According to Keith’s website, the December 12 show was one in a three-concert series, with the final one coming December 14. In what was described as ‘a triumphant return to the stage and touring,’ Keith ‘performed a two hour set of non-stop entertainment’ in the concert.

At one point in the show, Keith ‘sat on a stool, center stage and performed six songs that he said “should’ve been singles,”‘ according to his site.

Keith spoke about his mother and the influence she had on his musical inclinations in an October 2009 interview with the country music outlet The Boot.

‘My mom is a singer,’ he said at the time. ‘She had me when she was 20, and it was pretty much the end of her career.

‘She had been looked at by some record execs who had come to my grandmother’s supper club, and they were looking at my mom as a singer. Her young pictures remind me of Patsy Cline.’

The 6-foot-4 singer said that the ‘earliest memory’ he had was of his mother, and that he recalled crawling on the ground as a young child watching her singing.

‘She had her hair tied up in a bandana,’ Keith said. ‘I remember her dancing around and singing and poppin’. She could whistle like an instrument.

‘And she would whistle and when the singing would come on, she would sing with a great voice and she’d pop her rag and dust and be cleaning house and I remember her singing a Skeeter Davis song a lot called The End of the World.’

Keith spoke about his mother and the influence she had on his musical inclinations in an October 2009 interview

He said of his mother, ‘She had me when she was 20, and it was pretty much the end of her career’

Keith broke out in the country boom years of the 1990s, writing songs that fans loved to hear.

Over his career he publicly clashed with other celebrities and journalists and often pushed back against record executives who wanted to smooth his rough edges.

He was known for his overt patriotism on post 9/11 songs like Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, and boisterous barroom tunes like I Love This Bar and Red Solo Cup.

He had a powerful booming voice, a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and range that carried love songs as well as drinking songs.

Among his 20 No. 1 Billboard hits were How Do You Like Me Now?!, As Good As I Once Was, My List and Beer for My Horses, a duet with Willie Nelson.

His influences were other working class songwriters like Merle Haggard and he tallied more than 60 singles on the Hot Country chart over his career.

Throughout the cancer treatments, Keith continued to perform, most recently playing in Las Vegas in December. He also performed on the People´s Choice Country Awards in 2023 as he sang his song Don’t Let the Old Man In.

‘Cancer is a roller coaster,’ he told KWTV during an interview aired last month. ‘You just sit here and wait on it to go away. It might never go away.’

Keith and his spouse Trisha Lucas were pictured at the The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville last September

Keith broke out in the country boom years of the 1990s, writing songs that fans loved to hear

Keith worked as a roughneck in the oil fields of Oklahoma as a young man, then played semi-pro football before launching his career as a singer.

‘I write about life, and I sing about life, and I don´t overanalyze things,’ Keith told The Associated Press in 2001, following the success of his song I´m Just Talking About Tonight.

Keith learned good lessons in the booming oil fields, which toughened him up, but also showed him the value of money.

‘The money to be made was unbelievable,’ Keith told the AP in 1996. ‘I came out of high school in 1980 and they gave me this job December of 1979, $50,000 a year. I was 18-years-old.’

But the domestic oil field industry collapsed and Keith had not saved.

‘It about broke us,’ he said. ‘So I just learned. I´ve taken care of my money this time.’

He spent a couple seasons as a defensive end for the Oklahoma City Drillers. But he found consistent money playing music with his band throughout the red dirt roadhouse circuit in Oklahoma and Texas.

‘All through this whole thing the only constant thing we had was music,’ he said. ‘But it´s hard to sit back and say, “I´m going to go make my fortune singing music, or writing music.” I had no contacts.’

Eventually his path took him to Nashville, where he attracted the interest of Mercury Records head Harold Shedd, who was best known as a producer for the hit group Alabama. Shedd brought him to Mercury, where he released his platinum debut record Toby Keith, in 1993.

Among his 20 No. 1 Billboard hits were How Do You Like Me Now?!, As Good As I Once Was, My List and Beer for My Horses

Keith was honored with the Country Icon award 2023 People’s Choice Country Awards

Should´ve Been a Cowboy, his breakout hit, was played 3 million times on radio stations, making it the most played country song of the 1990s.

But the label´s focus on global star Shania Twain overshadowed the rest of the roster and Keith felt that the executives were trying to push him in a pop direction.

‘They were trying to get me to compromise, and I was living a miserable existence,’ Keith told the AP. ‘Everybody was trying to mold me into something I was not.’

After a series of albums that produced hits like Who´s That Man, and a cover of Sting’s ‘I´m So Happy I Can´t Stop Crying,’ Keith moved to DreamWorks Records in 1999.

That´s when his multiweek hit How Do You Like Me Now?! took off and became his first song to cross over to Top 40 charts. In 2001, he won the male vocalist of the year and album of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, exclaiming from the stage: ‘I´ve waited a long time for this. Nine years!’

Keith often wore his politics on his sleeve, especially after the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in 2001, and early on he said he was a conservative Democrat, but later claimed he was an independent.

He played at events for Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the latter giving him a National Medal of the Arts in 2021. His songs and his blunt opinions sometimes caused him controversy, which he seemed to court.

His 2002 song Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) included a threat – ‘We´ll put a boot in your a** – It´s the American way’ – to anyone who dared to mess with America.

His pro-military stance wasn´t just fodder for songs, however. He went on 18 USO tours to visit and play for troops. He also helped to raise millions for charity over his career, including building a home in Oklahoma City for kids with cancer and their families.

Keith was pictured performing during the iHeartCountry Festival at The Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas on October 30, 2021

After Universal Music Group acquired DreamWorks, Keith started anew again, starting his own record label, Show Dog, in 2005 with record executive Scott Borchetta, who launched his own label Big Machine at the same time.

‘Probably 75 percent of the people in this town think I´ll fail, and the other 25 percent hope I fail,’ he said that year.

Later the label became Show Dog-Universal Music and had Keith, Trace Adkins, Joe Nichols, Josh Thompson, Clay Walker and Phil Vassar on its roster.

His later hits included Love Me If You Can, She Never Cried In Front of Me, and Red Solo Cup. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.

He was honored by the performance rights organization BMI in November 2022 with the BMI Icon award, a few months after announcing his stomach cancer diagnosis.

‘I always felt like that the songwriting was the most important part of this whole industry,’ Keith told the crowd of fellow singers and writers.