When constructing this page, we asked ourselves: are these women truly Divas? It was difficult to decide, but then we thought-- they may have been raised in trailer home kitchens sheathed in avocado-green fake wood paneling, but their sheer determination to get the hell out of Pig's Butt, Tennessee, bestowed upon them the tools of Divadom: guts, grit, and an abiding desire to wallow in life's gravy. Reared on a diet of crackling corn pone and fried pork rinds, these quintessentially American (they exist no place else on God's green Earth!) country dames climbed down from the hills and up out of the hollers the hard way: with steely will and no little amount of talent-- and lots of hair to work with! Lacquered to within an inch of their lives with Aqua Net, Big Hair became a sign of success: the higher you teased that bouffant-- and you might even attach a couple of Woolworth's false pony-tails to it for effect-- the more important you were. They showed the world that success could come no matter how many years they spent treating themselves (and their double first cousins) for footworms, earwigs, and fungosa Walmartia. They come from a world where "God-fearing" and "standing by your man" are the same thing: they both mean "huddling in a corner of the shag-carpeted den while he throws empty beer cans at me, but Ah still love him." Their life experiences make normal people's tragedies seem like a picnic in the park: multiple divorces, myriad black eyes, alcoholic benders, and week-long sagas involving rabid pit bull terriers, one-eared half-sisters, and the expired warranty on Grandpaw's Sears Yard-O-Matic Lawn Edger... all of these, and more, supplied our bigger-than-life ladies with enough musical material to stretch into the next few millennia. And to their credit, no matter how rich or successful they became, you could always count on Dolly or Lynn or Dottie or Barbara to invite you to their Beverly Hills mansions for a mess of fat back... there, amidst the splendor of real avocado-green wood paneling, you'd come to see just how down to earth these ladies will always be.

(Introduction by Jimmy)

 

Enjoy our gallery of Hillbilly Divas!  To advance from one to the next, simply click on the picture!  And if you can think of any Hillbilly Divas who are missing from our pages, please let us know!