“The higher the hair, the closer to God”

Recording artist k. d. lang said in 1989: “If there’s one thing to be learned in Nashville it’s thing: The higher the hair, the closer to God.” The saying (also given as “The higher the hair, the closer to heaven”) is, perhaps, more frequently associated with Texas and its long tradition of “big hair.”
   
     
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The Higher The Hair, The Closer To Heaven
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10 November 1989, Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, “Lang fires up concert crowd” by Elizabeth Sullivan, pg. 36, col. 5:
“I should have known that…. If there’s one thing to be learned in Nashville it’s thing: The higher the hair, the closer to God.”
   
Google Books
Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World
By Susie Bright
Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press
1990
Pg. 148:
She (K. D. Lang—ed.) turned to the crowd and said, “You know what they say in Nashville — the higher the hair, the closer to God.”
   
Google Books
23 July 2002, The Advocate, pg. 45, col. 3:
At least five new queer-related works: Chic and Sassy: The Higher the Hair, The Closer to God, the tale of two “fresh-faced Texas trailer-park drag queens” who enter a play-writing contest;...
 
Google Books
Elvis Presley: the man, the life, the legend
By Pamela Clarke Keogh
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster
2004
Pg. 167:
The same style moxie extended to her hair. In Texas, there is the saying “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” and this instinct must have affected Miss (as she was still, to her endless sorrow, called) Beaulieu.
   
Google Books
Hair-A-Baloo:
The Revealing Comedy and Tragedy on Top of Your Head
By Patricia Wynn Brown
Lincoln, NE: IUniverse, Inc.
2005
Pg. 38:
At one Texas establishment called Beauty and the Books, there is a bookstore and a beauty shop combined. It’s a reading and beauty fest! Their motto: “The Higher the Hair the Closer to God.”
   
Google Books
The thing about Jane Spring: a novel
By Sharon Krum
New York, NY: Plume
2006
Pg. 134:
Doris firmly believed in the Texas adage “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” and Jane obediently followed her cue.
 
The Mundane Details
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Project!
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And of Bobby and me at a recent party. Shout-out to Tara for the gravity-defying hairstyle. As they say in Texas, “the higher the hair, the closer to heaven:”