100 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.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides Appalachia, which US upland region is most closely associated with the word "hillbilly"?
The Ozarks
The term spread north and west with the people who left both regions during the Great Depression.
Q 02In the Scottish origin story for the word, "billy" meant what?
Comrade
"Hill-folk" were people who kept apart from society; the combined term was applied to Covenanters hiding in the southern Scottish hills.
Q 03The earliest known printed use of 'hillbilly', in 1892, was in a journal for which industry's workers?
Railroads
An 1899 photograph labelled "Camp Hillbilly" and a 1900 New York Journal definition followed.
Q 04A 1900 New York Journal definition called a "Hill-Billie" a free and untrammeled white citizen of which state?
Alabama
He supposedly "drinks whiskey when he gets it, 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
His followers, the Cameronians, fled to the hills of southern Scotland in the late 17th century to avoid persecution.
Q 06The disputed "Billy's Boys" origin story links the word to Protestant supporters of which king?
William III
Scholar Michael Montgomery calls this Ulster derivation "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
Migrants also clustered in Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Akron and other industrial cities along what was called the Hillbilly Highway.
Q 08Steve Earle's 1986 debut album, which included his song "Hillbilly Highway", was called what?
Guitar Town
The song follows three generations of Appalachian men who leave home to find work.
Q 09Dwight Yoakam's 1987 song about coal-country kids heading north is named for which highway?
23
It appeared on the album Hillbilly Deluxe, and the road runs north out of Prestonsburg.
Q 10Which country pianist coined "hillbilly music" as a label in 1925?
Al Hopkins
Columbia had success with his band, the Hill Billies, and the label stuck to the whole genre until the 1950s.
Q 11Which OKeh Records recording director applied the Virginia term 'hillbilly' to all Southern country music?
Ralph Peer
He was also the talent scout and recordist at the August 1927 sessions that first captured the Carter Family.
Q 12Which Tennessee city has Congress recognized as the 'Birthplace of Country Music' for its 1927 recording sessions?
Bristol
The Johnson City sessions of 1928–29 and the Knoxville sessions of 1929–30 are also cited by historians.
Q 13On which Nashville station has the Grand Ole Opry aired since 1925?
WSM
OKeh Records began issuing hillbilly records in the same decade.
Q 21Which bluegrass duo performed "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" for The Beverly Hillbillies?
Flatt and Scruggs
Jerry Scoggins sang the theme over the credits, backed by the pair.
Q 22The Clampetts moved to Beverly Hills after striking what on their land?
Oil
The opening credits show Jed finding it while shooting at a rabbit; the first episode credits a company surveyor instead.
Q 23Who created The Beverly Hillbillies?
Paul Henning
He also wrote the theme song, and CBS followed with two more of his rural comedies.
Q 14What was Elvis Presley called early in his career, when he was playing rockabilly?
The Hillbilly Cat
Rockabilly and hillbilly boogie were the styles that mixed hillbilly and African American music.
Q 15The "hillbilly" label for the genre faded after which trade organisation was founded in 1958?
Country Music Association
The industry then merged hillbilly, Western swing and cowboy music into "Country and Western".
Q 16Which country star was notably offended by the "hillbilly music" label?
Hank Williams
The term is still used today, mostly for old-time music and bluegrass.
Q 17What is Ivy League station WHRB's long-running weekly old-time and bluegrass show called?
Hillbilly at Harvard
It is one of the few places the old label survives without irony.
Q 18Which duo recorded "Hillbilly Boogie", an early song to put the word in its title after "Hillbilly Rose"?
The Delmore Brothers
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
The recordings were made in Richmond, Indiana.
Q 20Bluegrass music takes its name from the band of which musician?
Bill Monroe
Traditionalists still treat his band's line-up of guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo and bass as the correct instrumentation.
Q 24Which CBS series from the same creator reversed The Beverly Hillbillies by sending city folk to the country?
Green Acres
It was a spin-off of Petticoat Junction and completed a trio of rural CBS hits.
Q 25Ma and Pa Kettle first appeared in which 1945 best-selling memoir?
The Egg and I
Betty MacDonald based them on real farming neighbours in Washington state.
Q 26Which actress played Ma Kettle in all ten films and got an Oscar nod for the 1947 original?
Marjorie Main
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
The nine spin-off films grossed an estimated $35 million.
Q 28Which 1941 Gary Cooper film is cited, with the Kettle series, as portraying the hillbilly as 'wild but good-natured'?
Sergeant York
Sixties television took the sympathetic line further, letting mountain folk outwit city slickers.
Q 29Which Gunsmoke character is cited as a quick-witted hillbilly who merely lacked "education"?
Festus Haggen
He arrived as Matt Dillon's deputy in the show's later years.
Q 30Who wrote and drew Li'l Abner for its entire 43-year run?
Al Capp
The strip ran from 1934 to 1977 and reached 60 million readers in over 900 US newspapers.