Rockabilly musician and voice of proudly ignorant Georgia squid Early Cuyler, Unknown Hinson returned to Dragon*Con this year for a performance during the Adult Swim Squidbillies panel.
Hinson, who shaved his iconic sideburns much to the dismay of those in the audience, played a three-song set for the crowd before joining the entire cast of Squidbillies in an unrehearsed reading of a script for a future episode of the show.
While we didn’t record the cast reading, we did manage to get coverage of Hinson’s performance, which we’ve embedded in the three videos below.
Until the emergence of Adult Swim‘s Squidbillies, never had there been an animated program that so eloquently embodied the life of an alcoholic talking squid and his illegitimate son in the rural foothills of Georgia.
Such is true of the voice acting for Squidbillies‘s hillbilly squid Early Cuyler, who routinely provides a plethora of thought provoking philosophical quotes such as his dinner table prayer:
“Dear lord… please allow this dangerous combination of hair spray, bat slobber, and D.O.T. four automatic transmission fluid to excite my mind, occupy my spirits, and enrage my body, provoking me to kick any man or woman in the back of the head regardless of what he or she has or has not done unto me.”
Lines of dialog like that can only be delivered effectively by one man, Stuart Daniel Baker a.k.a. the legendary Unknown Hinson. And long before becoming the voice of Early Cuyler, Hinson made a name for himself as a Rockabilly musician who is still touring. His songs are exactly how you’d imagine them to be (ridiculous and offensive). Actually, the amount of ridiculous shit that comes out of this man’s mouth is pretty much exactly like his Squidbillies character.
For proof I’ve provided videos of Unknown Hinson’s performance at the Dragon*Con 2009Squidbillies panel…
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press