This presentation examines freelance New York studio singers such as Carson J. Robison, Frank Luther, Frankie Marvin, Arthur Fields, Bob Miller, and, most notably, Vernon Dalhart, all of whom began their professional recording careers in light opera or popular music but who, during the mid- to late 1920s, shifted into recording, if sometimes only occasionally, material aimed at the expanding national market for hillbilly music. Collectively, such artists were responsible for recording approximately one-third of the 11,400 hillbilly discs released between 1924 and 1932. But because of these urban-based studio singers' lack of "authentic" traditional folk backgrounds and because of their formal musical training, they have not been accorded the same legitimacy and importance within the history of country music as have, for example, Fiddlin' John Carson, Jimmie Rodgers, or the Carter Family. Instead, they have been roundly dismissed as "professional hillbillies," "citybillies" or, more pejoratively, "pseudo-hillbillies"—that is, as nothing more than cultural carpetbaggers and impersonators. This presentation examines the careers of several of these freelance New York studio singers and musicians to document their underappreciated contributions to the development of hillbilly music during its formative first decade, and to discuss the issues of authenticity, commercialism, and the regional and class origins of this music, around which much of country music studies currently revolves.