“Blue Grass”? As in Kentucky? Where there ain’t no cowboys? WTF.
Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys, drifting into Tennessee all the way from the great plains of south-central Alabama? What gives.
One factor: Hollywood. Autry really was from Texas, where cowboys did at one point actually somewhat exist—not that he was ever a cowpuncher himself. His huge hits helped originate something that would no longer be called “hillbilly” but, far more politely, “country & Western.”
Another c&W superstar influencing the oddball connection between the hillbilly South and the Hollywood-cowboy wardrobe: Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. Tubb came from Texas—sharecropping, not riding the Plains—and became a dominant force far to the east and in a city: Nashville.
Before “& Western,” here’s a Nashville “hillbilly” look. The great frailing banjoist Grandpa Jones, star of “The Grand Ole Opry,” with an extreme presentation at least as fanciful as the cowboy outfits. Showbiz, baby.
More classic hillbilly. Dollars to doughnuts some of y’all still think that in real life the great comedian Minnie Pearl talked and dressed like Minnie Pearl. (And that her name was Minnie Pearl.) How-DEE!
How country artists presented themselves before “barn dance” costume took over.
No hillbilly—no cowboy. The 1960s Nashville Sound and Nashville Look …
… were violently thrown off in the 70’s …
… a mood that got framed as both an Old West revival and a back-to-country-roots revival (!) …
… and then everybody just went around the bend.
She wears it well.
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