Ernest V. Stoneman

about

Ernest Van "Pop" Stoneman (May 25, 1893 – June 14, 1968) was an American musician ranked among the prominent recording artists of country music's first commercial decade. Born in a log cabin in Monarat (Iron Ridge), Carroll County, Virginia, near what would later become Galax, Stoneman was left motherless at age three and was raised by his father and three musically inclined cousins, who taught him the instrumental and vocal traditions of Blue Ridge mountain culture. He became a singer and songwriter, and proficient musician on the guitar, autoharp, harmonica, clawhammer banjo, and jaw harp. When he married Hattie Frost in November 1918, he entered another musically involved family. He and Hattie had 23 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood: Eddie Lewis (deceased 2001), Irma Grace (deceased 2003), John Catron (deceased 2001), Pattie Inez "Patsy" (deceased 2015), Joseph William (Billy) (deceased 1990), Jack Monroe (deceased 1992), Gene Austin (deceased 2005), Dean Clark (deceased 1989), Calvin Scott (deceased 1973), Donna LaVerne, Oscar James (deceased 2002), Veronica Loretta (Roni), Van Haden (deceased 1995). Stoneman worked at a variety of jobs, in mines, mills, but mostly carpentry, and played music for his own enjoyment and that of his neighbors, but when he heard a Henry Whitter record in 1924, he determined to better it and changed his life as well. Stoneman went to New York City in September 1924 and cut two songs for the Okeh Records label. The record was shelv

top songs

albums

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Edison Recordings 1928

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Classic Railroad Songs from Smithsonian Folkways

Classic Southern Gospel from Smithsonian Folkways

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The Stoneman Family - Sutphin, Foreacre, and Dickens: Old-Time Tunes of the South

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Mountain Music Played on the Autoharp

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Classic Southern Gospel

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Classic Mountain Songs from Smithsonian Folkways

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Ernest Stoneman: 1928 Edison Recordings

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Mountain Music: Played on the Autoharp

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The Unsung Father Of Country Music

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Ernest Stoneman: 1928 Edison Recordin

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My Rough And Rowdy Ways: Early American Rural Music. Badman Ballads and Hellraising Songs, Vol. 1

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