Hair Wars! When The Length of A Man's Hair Led to An Ass Kicking

July 4, 2026

   Today we take stock of where our country has been and it's rather timely that Stuart Rosebrook has provided us with a heart warming story about the guy who saved our country fifty years ago.

   I am going to do a YouTube video on how this all impacted me and here are my notes:

   Hard to believe it's been fifty years—a half century—since we were celebrating the bicentennial of this great country. And, for you kids out there, too young to remember, it was still the Wild West out here in Cactusland. Half the country was very upset with the other half (sound familiar?). And what was all the anger about? Hair. Yes, the country that started with wigs and gravitated to shoulder-length locks on the legendary scouts of the plains decided that long hair on men designated them as a sissy, or worse!

The Original Long-Haired Country Boy

Wild Bill Hickok

   Perhaps it had something to do with the buzz cuts favored by the Korean War kids.

   Anyway, when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan in Feburary of 1964, the hair wars began, and by the 1970s it was a full-blown culture war.

   Merle Haggard had a couple songs that summed up the cowboy side of this equation: Okie From Muscogee and You're Walkin' On The Fightin' Side of Me.

   Now, my problem was I had a cultural toehold in both camps. My mother's side of the family were all cowboys and my cousin, Billy Hamilton, was a World Champion Steer Roper. My first memory of going to a dance was on the Big Sandy in a school house with a fiddle, two guitars and homemade cakes. I absolutely loved those old country shindigs. On the other hand, I saw the Beatles live at the Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada in August of 1964 and when I turned 21 in 1967 I saw Waylon Jennings upstairs at JDs in The River Bottom. What I remember about the show is that Waylon kept giving his drummer, Richie Albright (from Bagdad, Arizona!), so much grief for having "long hair" and he kept saying between songs that they were going to take him out back and give him a haircut. And, by the way, while Waylon played upstairs, you could go downstairs and hear Buffalo Springfield! Talk about a train wreck.

"There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. . ."

—Buffalo Springfield, For What It's Worth

Upstairs Downstairs

   Across town, in Glendale, Mr. Lucky's was the same deal: Country upstairs and Rock downstairs. You had to time it just right if you were going downstairs, or you'd get your butt kicked.

The Ultimate Longhair Hilarious Horror Story

   In 1972, a Texas Good Ol' Boy, Ray Wiley Hubbard made a death defying beer run in Red River, New Mexico. There were two bars in the tiny town and he chose the closest one to the band practice, which was the D-Bar-D, and when he walked in the door he instantly realized he had made a terrible mistake. The buzz cut crowd turned to look at his long hair—and not in a good way! He noticed an old woman and her son in the room and soon enough the son approached him and said over his shoulder to his mother, "You want me to beat him up?" Before the redneck son could throw a punch, Hubbard grabbed his case of beer and fled out the door where he noticed a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that said, "Goat ropers need love too." All of this ended up in his classic song "Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother." And that classic song is the perfect snapshot of the cultural divide in the 1970s.

   And, to cap it all off, it was Ray Wiley, who told Jerry Jeff Walker that it was Willie Nelson singing at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, that brought the Hippies and the Rednecks together. . .creating the "Hipnecks."

Our Long-haired Savior Willie

   Yes, Willie Nelson saved my bacon more than once. And he did it with pigtails! Crazy.

"The original title of 'Crazy' was 'Stupid.' Isn't that crazy?"

—Willie Nelson