Welcome to this custom -tailored deep dive. We're
really thrilled to have you with us today as
we open up our historical dossier on a man named
Ernest Stoneman. Or, as he was known, Pop Stoneman.
Yeah, glad you're here listening in because this
one is, it's quite a journey. It really is. The
mission today for you and us is to map out the
completely wild, really just rollercoaster life
of an unsung founding father of country music.
Unsung is definitely the right word for him.
Right. And when I say his career spanned eras,
I mean... It quite literally bridged the massive
technological gap between 1920s acoustic wax
cylinders and 1960s syndicated broadcast television.
It is a timeline that almost defies logic when
you lay it all out. It does. But before we really
get into the weeds, I want to throw a little
teaser out there just to frame the sheer scale
of the life we're looking at today. Lay it on
us. Okay. Imagine, just for a second, having
23 children. Which is a whole deep dive in itself.
Right. But then imagine selling two million copies
of a record in the 1920s. Following that dizzying
height, imagine losing absolutely every dime
you have in the Great Depression. Descending
into the kind of poverty where you are literally
manually building a shack to keep your family
warm. Yeah. And then somehow clawing your way
back to network television to win a Country Music
Association Award decades later. It's I mean,
it sounds like a fabricated Hollywood script.
It totally does. But it is all drawn directly
from the historical record of this one man. It
does read like fiction. But if we pull back the
lens, this deep dive is really about the mechanical
evolution of the commercial music industry itself.
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. It is
a study of extreme adaptation. When we trace
Pop Stoneman's life, we are tracing the tectonic
shifts of 20th century American entertainment.
From the very beginning. Exactly. From early
primitive phonographs. all the way to the golden
age of television. Okay, let's unpack this by
going right back to the roots. Where does he
start? Stoneman was born in 1893 in a log cabin
in Monterod, Virginia. This is right in the heart
of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And his early life
is marked by, well, immediate tragedy. He was
left motherless by the age of three. And that
early loss, it fundamentally shaped his environment.
He was raised by his father and three cousins.
Right. And the crucial element here is that these
cousins were completely steeped in the regional
music. They taught him the vocal and instrumental
traditions of the mountains. Which is so important
because... Keep in mind, this wasn't formal sheet
music or conservatory training. No, not at all.
This was a strict oral tradition. Passed down
face to face, instrument to instrument. right
there in that cabin. And he wasn't just casually
strumming a few chords either. He became a veritable
one -man band. He really did. He sang, he wrote
songs, and he mastered the guitar, the auto harp,
the harmonica, the claw hammer banjo, and the
jaw harp. And mastering that specific array of
instruments is significant. Well, he was essentially
absorbing the entire sonic landscape of Blue
Ridge culture. He was becoming a living archive
of a regional art form, you know, turning the
sounds he heard around him into an incredibly
versatile skill set that would eventually serve
as his golden ticket. Which brings us to his
own family dynamic, which is where the logistics
of this story just blow my mind. The 23 children.
Yes. In 1918, he marries Hattie Frost, who also
comes from a very musical family. They proceed
to have 23 children. It's just hard to fathom.
23. Now, 13 of them survive into adulthood, including
two who become highly notable in their own right,
Scotty and Roni. But you have to ask, how on
earth does a man support a family expanding at
that rate in the rural South in the early 1900s?
He does it through relentless manual labor. Music
was the passion, but it certainly wasn't paying
the bills. Not yet. He worked in the mines, he
worked in the mills, and he spent a lot of time
working as a carpenter. Just grueling work. Exactly.
Music was relegated to entertaining neighbors
or just playing for his own sanity after a 12
-hour shift. But then we hit this incredible
catalyst in 1924. Yeah. Stoneman hears a record
by an artist named Henry Witter. Ah, yes. He
doesn't just listen to it and tap his foot. He
listens to this scratchy, early commercial country
record. And his immediate reaction is essentially,
I can do better than this. Exactly. I can do
better. And the crazy thing is. He acts on it.
Which is such a brilliant display of audacity.
Yeah. You have to remember the landscape of the
early 1920s for a second. The recording industry
was in its absolute infancy. It was the Wild
West. Right. There weren't massive corporate
gatekeepers with global A &R departments in the
way we think of them today. Here is a carpenter
covered in sawdust who hears a record. analyzes
it, and decides his own skill set is superior.
He leverages that Blue Ridge Cabin education.
Yes. And he decides to challenge the market directly.
He really does. In September of 1924, this carpenter
traveled all the way to New York City to get
a meeting with Okie Records. That's a huge trip
back then. Massive. And he actually manages to
cut two songs. But in a classic showbiz twist,
the label shelves the record. Ouch. It goes absolutely
nowhere. I mean, a lot of people would have packed
it in and gone back to the lumberyard right then.
Most people would have. Traveling to New York
from rural Virginia in 1924 was not cheap and
it was not easy. To make that investment, get
in the room, record the tracks, and then have
them discarded is a massive blow. Soul crushing.
But his refusal to accept that rejection is what
defines his entire career. He stubbornly goes
right back to New York in January of 1925 for
another session. He wasn't giving up. And this
time, it catches fire. He releases a song called
Sinking of the Titanic. And it doesn't just do
well, it becomes a monster hit. A phenomenon.
We are talking about sales of over 2 million
copies. What does 2 million copies even look
like in the context of the 1920s? It is a staggering
figure. You have to consider that phonographs
were still a relatively new household luxury.
They weren't in every home. Not at all. And the
actual technology of the time often involved
acoustic recording. Which means what? Exactly.
For the artist. It means literally singing as
loudly as you could into a large conical horn.
Wow. Yeah. And that horn vibrated a stylus to
etch sound waves onto a wax cylinder or a flat
disc. Microphones weren't standard yet. So no
amplification. None. To move 2 million physical
units under those technological and economic
conditions meant his music was resonating on
a massive national scale. It crossed regional
boundaries. That massive success launches a truly
prolific era for him. Between 1925 and 1929,
he records over 200 songs. He was incredibly
busy. He bounces between major labels of the
era like Victor, Edison, Janet, and Paramount.
And by 1926, he starts pulling his family members
into the studio to create a full string band
sound. Right. The family dynamic comes into play.
And he is working extensively with a highly influential
producer named Ralph Peer. A legendary name in
the industry. Here's where it gets really interesting.
In the summer of 1927. Stoneman isn't just in
the recording booth playing his own songs. He
actually helps Ralph Peer conduct what become
known as the Bristol Sessions. Yes, the Bristol
Sessions. For anyone listening who knows country
music history, the Bristol Sessions are often
called the Big Bang of the genre. What's fascinating
here is Stoneman's transition from talent to
tastemaker. Okay, tell me more about that. While
he isn't just churning out his own product anymore,
he is actively scouting. By helping to facilitate
those Bristol sessions, he is instrumental in
the discovery of the Carter family and Jimmy
Rogers. Two absolute titans of the genre. Exactly.
He had a keen ear for the raw, authentic sounds
that the burgeoning commercial market was hungry
for. He was acting as a vital architect, laying
the very foundation for what commercial country
music would become. So we have this absolute
peak. He is a pioneer. He is an A and R scout
before the term really existed. And he is a star
selling millions of records. He's at the top
of the world. He is highly active right up through
1929. And then... The bottom falls out of the
world. The Great Depression. The Great Depression
hits and the Stoneman family is devastated. They
lose their home. They lose their wealth. They
lose their possessions. I want you listening
right now to try to put yourself in his shoes.
It's a terrifying thought. Going from selling
two million records, being the king of the mountain,
to utter destitution. The music industry essentially
collapsed overnight. Just like that. Just like
that. Discretionary income vanished, which meant
no one was buying records. If you couldn't afford
bread, you certainly weren't buying a wax cylinder.
But wait, how does a guy who sold two million
records just a few years prior end up with absolutely
nothing? Wouldn't he have royalties coming in
from those massive hits to cushion the blow?
That is the tragic reality of early commercial
music. Today, an artist with a two million selling
single has a vast web of mechanical royalties.
Right. Performance rights organizations. Like
ASCAP or BMI, plus union protections. In the
1920s, the model was often a flat fee. A flat
fee? Yeah. You went into the studio, you got
paid $50 to record the song, and you relinquished
the rights. That is insane. Even if the producer
offered a rudimentary royalty, the enforcement
and tracking were virtually non -existent for
rural artists. So the money just dried up. Completely.
When the economy crashed, the cash flow simply
stopped. That is brutal. So we have this stark
contrast. You go from the absolute high of shaping
a new music industry in New York City to utter
destitution. Survival mode. By 1932, the Stonemans
have nine surviving children, and they are forced
to leave the mountains. They move to the Washington,
D .C. area, where they eventually have four more
kids. So 13 kids total living under his roof
during the Depression. Stoneman is taking whatever
manual labor work he can find just to keep them
from starving, while still trying to hustle for
whatever meager music gigs exist. It creates
an incredibly dark valley in his timeline. The
1930s for the Stoneman family are defined purely
by survival. He is no longer the hotshot recording
artist. He is a desperate father trying to feed
over a dozen people during the worst economic
crisis in American history. The reality of that
struggle really crystallizes in 1941. He buys
a cheap plot of land in Carmody Hills, Maryland.
And he uses his carpentry skills to physically
build a shack from scratch for his massive family.
He built it himself. Yes. And he eventually lands
a regular job working at the naval gun factory.
I want you to visualize that contrast. A decade
prior, he was a nationwide star. Now... He is
holding a hammer at a gun factory and living
in a self -built shack. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, it highlights the extreme
vulnerability of industry pioneers. That take
all risks? Exactly. The folks who hack through
the jungle and build the first roads rarely get
to drive the luxury cars on them later. That's
a great analogy. Stoneman built the commercial
country music road, but the economic structures
weren't in place to protect him when the storms
came. Yet, despite that grueling reality, the
music didn't stop. They kept playing. They never
stopped playing. And that brings us to the most
triumphant pivot in this entire narrative. The
family transitions to a brand new disruptive
technology. Television. Television. The comeback
really sparks in 1947. The Stoneman family enters
a talent contest at Constitution Hall in Washington,
D .C., and they win. And the prize for that was
huge. The prize is six months of exposure on
local television. Which is an incredibly strategic
medium to conquer in 1947. Television was in
its absolute infancy. Much like the commercial
phonograph industry was when he dominated it
in the 20s. Precisely. Once again, Pop Stoneman
recognizes a new technological frontier and he
gets his family in on the ground floor. And they
ride that wave brilliantly into the 1950s. The
milestones they hit in 1956 are just phenomenal.
1956 was a massive year for them. First, Pop
Stoneman goes on the NBC television quiz show
called The Big Surprise. He sings, he charms
the audience, and he wins $10 ,000. A fortune
back then. That same year, a group made up largely
of his children, calling themselves the Bluegrass
Champs, go on the massive CBS television program
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Which was the
American Idol of its day. And they win that too.
Also in 1956, Mike Seeger, who is a huge figure
in the folk revival, records Pop and his wife
Hattie for the Folkways label. 1956 is the undeniable
tipping point of the resurgence. The momentum
is finally permanently back. He finally gets
a break. Pop is able to retire from the manual
labor that had broken his back for decades. The
children's group, the Champs, transition into
a full -time professional outfit and officially
become known as the Stonemans. And their trajectory
from that point is a steady, relentless climb
upward. They start conquering the 1960s. They
record albums for the Starday label. By 1964,
they are touring through Texas and California.
They cut a record for World Pacific. They are
playing major venues like Disneyland. Disneyland.
Yeah. They tap into the massive 1960s folk revival,
playing the Monterey Folk Festival in 1964, and
Pop himself appears at the UCLA Folk Music Festival.
They manage to bridge the generational gap perfectly.
The younger folk revival audience of the 1960s
was desperate for authenticity, for real pioneers
of American roots music. And Pop Stoneman was
the genuine article. He really was standing right
there on stage with his incredibly talented children.
That momentum drives them right into the absolute
climax of the story. In 1965, the Stoneman's
moved to Nashville. The undisputed capital of
the industry he helped create. They start working
with legendary producer Jack Clement. They sign
a major contract with MGM Records. They launch
their own syndicated TV show. They even start
appearing in feature films like the 1967 movie
Hell on Wheels and The Road to Nashville. It
just kept building. And then the ultimate validation
from the industry that had forgotten him for
20 years. In 1967, the Stonemans win the Country
Music Association's Award for Vocal Group of
the Year. It is an unparalleled vindication.
Truly. To hold that award, standing next to the
children he raised in a self -built shack during
the Depression, must have been an unimaginably
powerful moment. I get chills just thinking about
it. Sadly, Pop Stoneman passes away the following
year, in 1968, at the age of 75. But what a way
to go out. He is interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery
in Nashville, finally at rest in the city built
on the music he pioneered. It is an awe -inspiring
arc. From a motherless toddler in a Virginia
log cabin learning the jaw harp, to a forgotten
carpenter building a shack to survive the Depression,
to a patriarch holding a CMA award on national
television. It's an incredible American story.
It's a story of profound musical genius, but
far more than that, it is a masterclass in extreme,
unyielding human resilience. His legacy has only
solidified since his passing. It certainly has.
The historical recognition finally caught up
to him. In 2008, Pop Stoneman was officially
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Long overdue. Very. In 2009, he and Hattie were
enshrined in the Janet Records Walk of Fame.
And a massive retrospective of his early work,
put together by a Grammy -winning reissue team,
was released in 2008. I remember that release.
The album, titled Ernest Stoneman. The unsung
father of country music, 1925 to 1934, was even
nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes.
A perfect capstone. So what does this all mean?
This raises an important question about the true
nature of longevity in any creative field. Pop
Stoneman demonstrated the incredible value of
aggressive adaptation. He never stopped moving
forward. He evolved his delivery mechanism, moving
from acoustic cylinders to radio to local television
to syndicated culture. broadcasts, but he never
fundamentally altered the authentic roots of
his art. He never stopped being that musician
from the Blue Ridge Mountains. He just kept finding
new technologies to project that mountain music
to the world. That's exactly it. And I'll leave
you with a final thought to mull over. The Stoneman
family managed to sustain a cultural dynasty
across 50 years and multiple technological revolutions
that wiped out thousands of their peers. So many
others faded away. Right. So if you look at the
landscape today with the chaotic shift from streams,
algorithms to short form video and AI, what emerging
platforms might a family use today to spark the
next 50 year dynasty? Why? And more importantly,
how would they build their foundation to ensure
they survive the next? predictable technological
crash? That is a phenomenal question to leave
off on. Thank you so much for joining us on this
deep dive today. We hope this incredible story
of resilience and reinvention sticks with you,
and we encourage you to keep looking for the
hidden histories behind the media you consume
every day. Until next time.