#hill-billy

“Mountain Music Lovers On March To Springfield; Chamber of Commerce Looks Askance at Hill Billy Antics; Old Fiddlers Will Torture Ears of Progressive Ozark City,” read a headline from The Jefferson City Post-Tribune: “The new broadside was fired by John T. Woodruff, president of the Chamber, who told sponsors of the Ozarks folk festival across the table last night that writers on Ozarkian…

Congressman Dewey Short – Hillbilly and Orator and proud of it

Press photo, May 9, 1938, showing Congressman Short, Rep. Dudley White and their wives at a DC barn dance. Dewey Short was “an avowed Hill-Billy.” Neither he nor renowned folklorist Vance Randolph ever disavowed the term. Unlike the transplanted Kansas folklorist, the educated congressman was an Ozark native. Like politicians from Andrew Jackson on, he exploited his backwoods credentials. The…