A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
“You’re legally allowed to park in a handicap spot if you get back with your ex more than twice” (3/18)
“You can legally park in a handicap spot if you get back with your ex more than 2 times” (3/18)
Entry in progress—BP2 (3/18)
“It’s hard to save money when food is always flirting with me” (3/18)
“Don’t use a big word when a singularly unloquacious and diminutive linguistic expression…” (3/18)
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Entry from January 06, 2011
“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.”
   
     
Zazzle.com
The Higher The Hair, The Closer To Heaven
Coffee Mugs
 
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!
(...)
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:”

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Thursday, January 06, 2011 • Permalink


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