Hillbilly Trivia Questions and Answers
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99 free Hillbilly Trivia Questions and Answers trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
"Hillbilly" started as a Scottish-flavoured word for mountain folk, turned up in an 1892 railroad journal, and went on to name a music genre, a comic-strip town, a wrestler, a highway of migration and a best-selling memoir. These hillbilly trivia questions and answers cover the whole sprawl: the word's disputed roots, the Hatfield and McCoy feud (yes, the hog), moonshine and why it is called that, and the "hillbilly music" label that Ralph Peer stuck on early country before the term fell out of favour. Then it heads for the screen and the funny pages: Li'l Abner and Sadie Hawkins Day, Snuffy Smith, Ma and Pa Kettle, The Beverly Hillbillies, Hee Haw and BR-549, The Dukes of Hazzard, Deliverance, Justified, Hillbilly Jim in the WWF and Hillbilly Elegy on the page and on Netflix. It works as a themed party quiz or a hillbilly-night round for a bar, and the easy questions come first in each section. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the term and the shows, books and people involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Historically, the word "hillbilly" has been applied to people of Appalachia and which other rural US upland region?
The Ozarks
The Ozarks: TV's best-known hillbillies, the Clampetts, were Ozark mountaineers, a clan their creator based on his own camping trips in those hills.
Q 02In the Scottish origin story for "hillbilly", "billy" meant what?
Comrade
Comrade: in Scots a 'billie' was a comrade or companion, and the theory joins it to the 'hill-folk', Covenanters who hid in the southern uplands to escape persecution.
Q 03An 1892 use of "hillbilly", among the earliest known in print, appeared in a journal for which industry's workers?
Railroads
Railroads: in The Railroad Trainmen's Journal of July 1892 a worker grumbled that it wasn't right to hire 'some Hill Billy' and give him the same rights as an old hand.
Q 04A 1900 New York Journal definition called a "Hill-Billie" a free and untrammeled white citizen of which state?
Alabama
Alabama: the April 1900 New York Journal defined a 'Hill-Billie' as 'a free and untrammelled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills' and 'fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him'.
Q 05Which country songwriter of the 1940s and 50s was nicknamed the "Hillbilly Shakespeare"?
Hank Williams
Hank Williams: the 'Hillbilly Shakespeare' wrote 'Your Cheatin' Heart' and 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry', then died at 29 in the back seat of a car on the way to a concert.
Q 06The disputed Ulster origin story links "hillbilly" to Protestant supporters of which king?
William III
William III: 'King Billy' of Orange won the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and the tale has his Ulster followers carrying the name to America, yet dictionaries find the word in print only from the late 1800s.
Q 07Which Chicago neighbourhood was nicknamed "Hillbilly Heaven" in the 1960s for its Appalachian migrants?
Uptown
Uptown: its old mansions and large apartments had been cut up into small, cheap rooms, and that affordable housing is what drew the newcomers from the mountains.
Q 08Steve Earle's 1986 debut album, which included his song "Hillbilly Highway", was called what?
Guitar Town
Guitar Town: Steve Earle's 1986 MCA debut album included 'Hillbilly Highway', a song that follows three generations of men leaving home to find work.
Q 09Which country star sang of Route 23 on his 1987 album Hillbilly Deluxe?
Dwight Yoakam
Dwight Yoakam: born in Pikeville and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he had made the trip himself, and his song turns the three Rs into reading, writing and Route 23.
Q 10Which pianist led the Hill Billies, the 1925 string band widely credited with giving "hillbilly music" its name?
Al Hopkins
Al Hopkins: in January 1925 his band told OKeh's recording director they were 'nothing but a bunch of hillbillies', were billed as the Hill Billies, and the label stuck to the genre until the 1950s.
Q 11Which OKeh Records recording director is credited with applying "hillbilly" to all Southern country music?
Ralph Peer
Ralph Peer: he always claimed to have given country music the name it wore until after World War II, and on one 1927 field trip he made the first records of both the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.
Q 12Which Tennessee city has Congress recognized as the 'Birthplace of Country Music' for its 1927 recording sessions?
Bristol
Bristol: Victor's July–August 1927 sessions on State Street in Bristol, Tennessee, produced the first Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers records, and Congress recognized the city as the Birthplace of Country Music in 1998.
Q 13Which Nashville station began broadcasting the Grand Ole Opry in 1925?
WSM
Q 21Which bluegrass duo performed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" for The Beverly Hillbillies?
Flatt and Scruggs
Flatt and Scruggs: Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs recorded 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' in 1962; Jerry Scoggins sang the theme over the credits, backed by the pair, and the single topped Billboard's country chart in early 1963.
Q 22The Clampetts moved to Beverly Hills after striking what on their land?
Oil
Oil: the theme song has Jed 'shooting at some food' when 'up through the ground came a-bubbling crude', and the OK Oil Company bought the drilling rights for millions, sending the family to Beverly Hills.
Q 23Who created The Beverly Hillbillies?
Paul Henning
WSM: the call letters stand for 'We Shield Millions', the motto of the insurance company that owned the station, which launched its Saturday barn dance within weeks of signing on in 1925.
Q 14What was Elvis Presley called early in his career, when he was playing rockabilly?
The Hillbilly Cat
The Hillbilly Cat: his first single in 1954 put a blues song on one side and a speeded-up bluegrass waltz on the other, the mix the billing was selling.
Q 15The "hillbilly" label for the genre faded after which trade organisation was founded in 1958?
Country Music Association
Country Music Association: performers, disc jockeys and music executives formed it in Nashville because rock and roll was threatening country's record sales, and they set out to win the music more radio and TV exposure.
Q 16Blake Shelton's 2009 duet 'Hillbilly Bone' featured which country singer?
Trace Adkins
Trace Adkins: the duet insists that everybody, even a New York friend who has never heard of Conway Twitty, has a hillbilly bone deep down, and it topped the country chart in 2010.
Q 17What is Ivy League station WHRB's long-running weekly old-time and bluegrass show called?
Hillbilly at Harvard
Hillbilly at Harvard: the Ivy League station still uses the label the music industry dropped, and two Harvard graduates, Lynn Joiner and Brian Sinclair, hosted the show side by side from the 1970s until 2002.
Q 18Which brother duo recorded "Hillbilly Boogie" for King Records in the 1940s?
The Delmore Brothers
The Delmore Brothers: Alton and Rabon Delmore mixed blues and boogie into their harmonies at King, and their 'Freight Train Boogie' is regarded by some as the first rock and roll record.
Q 19Which country star's childhood in Butcher Hollow became the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter?
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn: she picked Sissy Spacek for the part from a photograph, and Spacek sang every Lynn hit in the film herself and won the Best Actress Oscar.
Q 20Bluegrass music takes its name from the band of which musician?
Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe: the 'Father of Bluegrass' named his band the Blue Grass Boys after his home state's nickname, and the style they forged ended up taking the band's name.
Paul Henning: the former radio writer created The Beverly Hillbillies for CBS in 1962 and wrote its theme, 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett'; CBS followed with two more of his rural comedies.
Q 24Which CBS sitcom, a sister show to The Beverly Hillbillies, sent a New York couple to a run-down farm?
Green Acres
Green Acres: the 1965 CBS sitcom, created by Jay Sommers for the Beverly Hillbillies producer, moved a Manhattan lawyer and his wife to a farm near Hooterville, the town shared with Petticoat Junction.
Q 25Ma and Pa Kettle first appeared in which 1945 best-selling memoir?
The Egg and I
The Egg and I: Betty MacDonald's memoir of chicken farming on Washington's Olympic Peninsula introduced the Kettles, and neighbours who saw themselves in the pair sued her, one case settling out of court.
Q 26Which actress played Ma Kettle in all ten films and got an Oscar nod for the 1947 original?
Marjorie Main
Marjorie Main: born Mary Tomlinson, a minister's daughter, she took the stage name to avoid embarrassing her family, and Percy Kilbride played Pa beside her in eight of the films.
Q 27The Ma and Pa Kettle films are said to have saved which studio from bankruptcy?
Universal
Universal: audiences took to the Kettles so strongly in their 1947 debut that the studio spun them off into nine cheap comedies, which are often credited with keeping it solvent.
Q 28Which 1941 film won Gary Cooper an Oscar for playing a real Tennessee mountain marksman?
Sergeant York
Sergeant York: Alvin York had refused film offers for years and gave in only to pay for a Bible school he wanted to build; Cooper's performance won the Best Actor Oscar.
Q 29Which scruffy, illiterate hill man became Marshal Dillon's deputy on Gunsmoke after Chester left?
Festus Haggen
Festus Haggen: Ken Curtis, who played the cantankerous deputy for 11 years, had been a big-band vocalist and a singer with the Sons of the Pioneers.
Q 30Which cartoonist created Li'l Abner and kept the strip running for 43 years?
Al Capp
Al Capp: a native of New Haven, Connecticut, he spent 43 years chronicling a Southern mountain village he had invented, with help from assistants such as Frank Frazetta.