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 share the label with Appalachia: "hillbilly" historically meant people of America's rural, mountainous areas, and those two regions above all.
Q 02In the Scottish origin story for the word, "billy" meant what?
Comrade
Comrade: in the Scottish theory 'hill-folk' were people who kept apart from society and 'billy' meant comrade or companion, a sense later applied to Covenanters hiding in the southern hills.
Q 03The earliest known printed use of 'hillbilly', in 1892, was in a journal for which industry's workers?
Railroads
Railroads: the earliest known printed use appeared in an 1892 issue of The Railroad Trainmen's Journal; an 1899 photograph labelled 'Camp Hillbilly' followed.
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 05One theory ties the word to Scottish 'hill-folk' Covenanters who followed which Presbyterian preacher?
Richard Cameron
Richard Cameron: the Cameronians, his followers, fled to the hills of southern Scotland in the 1680s to escape persecution; one theory derives 'hillbilly' from those Scottish hill-folk.
Q 06The disputed Ulster origin story links the word to Protestant supporters of which king?
William III
William III: the Ulster theory derives the word from Protestant followers of King William of Orange, but scholar Michael Montgomery calls it 'almost certainly incorrect', since the American word is first attested only in the 1890s.
Q 07Which Chicago neighbourhood was nicknamed "Hillbilly Heaven" in the 1960s for its Appalachian migrants?
Uptown
Uptown: Chicago's Uptown neighbourhood took in so many Appalachian migrants in the 1950s and 1960s that it was nicknamed 'Hillbilly Heaven'; others settled in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Akron.
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 09Dwight Yoakam's 1987 song about coal-country kids heading north is named for which highway?
23
23: 'Readin', Rightin', Rt. 23' appeared on Yoakam's 1987 album Hillbilly Deluxe; U.S. Route 23 carried coal-country families north through Prestonsburg toward Ohio's factory towns.
Q 10Which country pianist coined "hillbilly music" as a label in 1925?
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 applied the Virginia term 'hillbilly' to all Southern country music?
Ralph Peer
Ralph Peer: OKeh's recording director took the 'hillbillies' name a Virginia string band gave itself in 1925 and applied it to all the Southern country music he recorded; in August 1927 he recorded the Carter Family for Victor.
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 Nashville station owned by National Life and Accident Insurance signed on in October 1925 and started the barn-dance broadcast that became the Grand Ole Opry that November.
Q 14What was Elvis Presley called early in his career, when he was playing rockabilly?
The Hillbilly Cat
The Hillbilly Cat: Elvis was billed as 'the Hillbilly Cat' on Louisiana Hayride and Sun-era posters in 1954–55, when his rockabilly fused hillbilly boogie with rhythm and blues.
Q 15The "hillbilly" label for the genre faded after which trade organisation was founded in 1958?
Country Music Association
Country Music Association: founded in Nashville in 1958, the CMA promoted 'country music' as the genre's name, replacing 'hillbilly' as the trade label.
Q 16Blake Shelton's 2009 duet 'Hillbilly Bone' featured which country singer?
Trace Adkins
Trace Adkins: 'Hillbilly Bone', released in November 2009, paired Blake Shelton with Trace Adkins and won the CMA Award for Musical Event of the Year 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: WHRB's Saturday-morning old-time, country and bluegrass programme began in 1948 and kept the old 'hillbilly' label in its name for decades.
Q 18Which duo recorded 'Hillbilly Boogie' in 1946, an early song with the word in its title?
The Delmore Brothers
The Delmore Brothers: Alton and Rabon Delmore cut 'Hillbilly Boogie' for King Records in 1946, and the boogie style they helped popularise fed directly into rockabilly.
Q 19Which black fiddler made the 1927 Gennett recordings filed as 'made for Hillbilly'?
Jim Booker
Jim Booker: the Black fiddler recorded with a mixed-race string band for Gennett at Richmond, Indiana, in 1927, and the company's ledger filed the sides as 'made for Hillbilly'.
Q 20Bluegrass music takes its name from the band of which musician?
Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe: the genre takes its name from his band, the Blue Grass Boys, formed in 1939; their line-up of guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo and bass became the standard bluegrass instrumentation.
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 series from the same producer sent a city 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 1945 memoir of chicken farming on Washington's Olympic Peninsula introduced the Kettles, based on real neighbours who later sued her for libel and lost.
Q 26Which actress played Ma Kettle in all ten films and got an Oscar nod for the 1947 original?
Marjorie Main
Marjorie Main: she played Ma Kettle in all ten films and earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the 1947 original; Percy Kilbride played Pa in the first eight.
Q 27The Ma and Pa Kettle films are said to have saved which studio from bankruptcy?
Universal
Universal: the nine cheaply made Kettle spin-offs grossed an estimated $35 million and are often credited with keeping Universal-International solvent in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Q 28Which 1941 Gary Cooper film is cited, with the Kettle series, as portraying the hillbilly as 'wild but good-natured'?
Sergeant York
Sergeant York: Gary Cooper won the Best Actor Oscar for the 1941 biopic of the Tennessee mountain marksman Alvin York, a portrayal of the hillbilly as wild but good-natured.
Q 29Which Gunsmoke character is cited as a quick-witted hillbilly who merely lacked "education"?
Festus Haggen
Festus Haggen: Ken Curtis played the scruffy, quick-witted hill man who became Marshal Dillon's deputy after Chester's 1964 departure and stayed to the series' end in 1975.
Q 30Who wrote and drew Li'l Abner for its entire 43-year run?
Al Capp
Al Capp: Capp wrote and drew Li'l Abner from 1934 to 1977, and at its peak the strip reached about 60 million readers in over 900 US newspapers.