As a native Pascagoulian, I prefer "traditional southern" over "redneck”. For the most part the southern accents along the coast are different from the southern accents in the northern part of the State.
I was in a hotel bar in Seattle a few years ago and started chatting with this old dude from NYC. Within minutes the guy asks, "Where in Mississippi are you from?" Totally out of the blue he pegged my accent as Mississippian, and much like you I had been told my entire life that I had little trace of an accent.