You know what's funny? Looking back on early country music - good deal of it was proletarian.
In fact, one of the earliest uses of the term "redneck" was used to describe the red bandannas worn by striking coal miners in PA, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
Red has always been the communist/socialist color, and it was clear that their acceptance of coal miners of african descent (who also wore the bandannas) you see a distinct anti-racist, pro internationalist stance, which is the hallmark of traditional leftist thought.
It's so weird that the term migrated to take it's nearly opposite meanng in the seventies, and then contemporarily was re-branded as a positive term used to self-describe racist, anti-union, pro-statist, consumer driven, nationalist reactionaries.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck