The Man Called ‘Pop’

The Man Called ‘Pop’
Ernest Stoneman’s
Country Dynasty

The Carroll County, Va.-born Ernest Stoneman (1893-1968) may have been the first American to build a career around the Titanic tragedy when he traveled to New York City in 1925 to record the million-selling “The Sinking of The Titanic.”

But beating Leonardo DiCaprio to the punch by almost 75 years is not why we’ll remember “Pop” Stoneman; he’s the singer/songwriter/bandleader who helped the recording industry understand the appeal that rural acts — using regional dialects and instruments — could have to a national audience.

By the late 1920s, “Pop was recording inexpensively for anyone who would have him,” says Dick Spotswood, a music historian who hosts a syndicated public radio show dedicated to the roots of country music from WAMU-FM in Washington D.C. “He had a down-home sound” that reflected the music he grew up with in Carroll County, “and it became desirable for labels for the first time … to use real local records with dialect and instruments like the fiddle, rather than just guitar and autoharp,” Spotswood says.

Stoneman’s career started at a cotton mill in Fries; a co-worker had a “home recording machine,” and in 1914, Pop recorded a tune using an autoharp he crafted with parts from an old piano. That experience, and the belief that he could do better than fellow Virginia guitarist Henry Whitter’s recordings, spurred his dogged pursuit of musical success. “The Sinking of The Titanic” hit number three on the Billboard/Variety charts in 1926, and Pop continued to record in such faraway places as Buffalo and Detroit.

Stoneman also had a hand in helping the recording industry settle down in the Appalachian Mountains. In 1927, he was the first of five acts to record for the Bristol (Tennessee) Recording Sessions, deemed the “Big Bang” of country music. He was followed to the sessions by the Carter Family and Mississippi yodeler Jimmie Rodgers, who made their national commercial debuts and rode the sessions to nationwide success.

Pop Stoneman, meanwhile, recorded about 200 songs between 1924 and 1929, and then the Depression wiped him out. He had to resume his prior career as a carpenter and, with Southside Virginia’s textile industry foundering, moved his wife and 13 children to Washington, D.C., where, after World War II, the children became part of the band.

Pop Stoneman gave way to the Stonemans, who played steady gigs in the D.C. area. When the folk boom of the early ‘60s hit, Pop and the family were perfectly positioned. In 1966, the family got its own nationally syndicated television show, Those Stonemans. A year later, the Stonemans won the first Country Music Association Award as best vocal group.

And, in 1968, Pop Stoneman died at the peak of his popularity.

— Dave Harrison

Recommended on CD:
Ernest Stoneman: The Complete Edison Recordings (County)
Ernest Stoneman and the Blue Ridge Corn Shuckers (Rounder)

— Originally published in 64 Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 2001.