There were so many regional southern accents, even within one state. Y'all must not have traveled into much of the off-ramp South. Plus, today there has been so much incursion from the north and the west coast, those regional accents are getting watered down over time.
If some linguist/anthropologist made tape recordings from the '60s era South, I'm sure many of them would sound exaggerated and unreal today.
I had a lovely friend who always pronounced my first name (3-letters, one-syllable, one vowel) as three distinct syllables! She went to Auburn for her degree in... kid you not... Speech Therapy.
