I love Tennessee accents (similar to West Virginian). It’s kind of slurry and country and very distinctive. Very different from the Alabama accents I hear all around me.
That’s the difference in Appalachian twang and plantation drawl, the two basic Southern accents. The map in post #82 calls them Inland Southern and Lowland Southern (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3749412/posts?page=82#82) and shows where you’re most likely to hear them.
I’ve lived in various parts of the South and am familiar with both. The first sounds like poor hillbillies with a moonshine still and the other sounds like Gone with the Wind style aristocrats or sitting around the courthouse in a seersucker suit. Alabama governor Kay Ivey has one of the thickest plantation/Lowland Southern accents I’ve ever heard.
The two accents are distinctly different but also distinctly Southern and so they can get lumped together by non-Southerners. Like sometimes you’ll see an actor playing a poor TN redneck but sounding like landed old-money MS/AL/GA gentry. The fact that there’s quite a bit of overlap in where they’re spoken (more than the map suggests) probably adds to the confusion. The overlap is because the division isn’t just geographic — it’s also a class thing to some extent. Also the simple fact that the Appalachian twang seems to be kind of infectious and good at spreading itself around. You’ll hear it from the Florida panhandle up into Kentucky and over into Texas.