Biographie

5 mai 1938 · Washington, District de Columbia, États-Unis

22 février 2024 · Murfreesboro, Tennessee, États-Unis

Veronica Loretta Stoneman

The Stoneman Family won the Academy of Country Music "Vocal Group of the Year Award" in 1967. After Pop's death a year later, Roni Stoneman, known as a virtuoso banjo player in both country music and bluegrass, pursued a musical career on her own.

Roni and her family, the Stonemans, did the soundtrack on the Bear Jamboree for Disney. The Bear Jamboree is fashioned after the Stonemans.

She was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2021 with the rest of her family.

Member of The Stoneman Family.

Sister of Donna Stoneman.

I love it. An old man in Nashville-an old feller who'd come across the street with his family. He had a walker and was very old. I was smiling and I thought, 'Country music brought them people here.' He stopped and said, 'Aren't you Ernest Stoneman's least 'un?' 'You know 'em?' 'I sure do! I remember you when I was a kid!' 'How old are you?' '96! This is my first trip to Nashwille!' He said, 'I remember you when I was a kid'? How old does he think I am? But he'd seen me onstage 4-5-6-7-10-all the years of my life. He grew up with me! He remembered. So I told my daughter I kicked the walker out from under him! I got a story I wanna tell you-the one about Debbie Reynolds!

We had to take care of ourselves! Sometimes we didn't have enough to eat-that's why I say send a sandwich! You gotta love music-you can't just play for yourself. Daddy said no matter how good you think you are, someone somewhere is better-they just haven't come out of the hills yet. Daddy was smart-that's something that sticks with you. We'd play a lot in Maryland and D.C.-right there next to the Greyhound station. The Famous Bar and Grill. The servicemen would come over and have a few drinks, needless to say. They liked their music. We played six shows a night! Six hours a night six nights a week with fifteen minute breaks. $56 a week not including tips. Country just wasn't popular enough for concert halls. We did a whole lot of music and half the time people would run off with the money. 'THE MAN HAS LEFT THE GROUNDS!' But we went-we knew our instruments, knew we could sing, knew our harmonies, won vocal group of the year, had our own TV show, and then we'd get there and the man had run off with the money. And we'd play for nothing! You had to-the fans were extremely important! People make you feel good. You're in from the mountains-grandfather played and great-grandfather and the music is pure roots. And there are hard times on mountain people, but they have their music and culture and sad songs and good songs-they pull through because they're perserverence-type people.

There were five bands in the family at one time-daddy took the younger children as 'Pop Stoneman and the Little Pebbles.' Isn't that a cute thought? We never learned to play from reading. None of us were scholars. We lived in Maryland-a one-room house with a clapboard roof. In 1920, daddy recorded for Thomas Edison. 'The Sinking Of The Titanic.' I got the cylinder and a cylinder player. He went to New York and was making lots of money for an old mountain preacher's son from Virginia. When the Depression hit in '29, daddy lost everything because he signed a lot of bank notes. Mommy played fiddle and banjo and she married daddy when she was 19. My older brothers just played music to get drunk by. Like daddy said-'They'll always send you up a drink, but they won't buy you a sandwich when you're down!' 'Send that fiddle a drink! Get that skinny one on banjo-get her a drink!' 'No, I want a sandwich!' We played honky-tonks but it was all drunks-people wasn't sophisticated. We didn't have shoes to go to school in! Four or five officials came to the house when we were eating dinner-we had a long table grandpa made mommy when she got married and had a dowry. Every time someone got married, we took a slat out of the table.

We were playing the Famous Bar and Grill and I noticed a couple nights there were seven men on the right hand side of me-I remember everything!-and they didn't holler and they wasn't all drunk and I wondered what they were doing in here? They said they were professors from Georgetown. 'Why you all doin in here listening to this mess?' 'We came to see the great Stonemans!' 'You think we're great?' 'Oh yeah, we love your music and we love your culture.' And I said, 'I didn't know we had one!' It makes you feel good. That heartfelt feeling that I'm OK and everybody don't make fun of you because you're hillbilly and raggy and it makes you love 'em! When you're so poor and you got homemade instruments and your shoes are all worn-you're wearing your brothers' shoes-but you're playing good music, and they come up to you and you think they're educated and smart and ain't they wonderful? They taught us from the very beginning, the audience. It sounds corny but it's the truth. They taught us the music was important to them.

This man Leon-everywhere we'd turn around there would be Leon with a camera and a little recorder. We'd sit there and let him. He was a good man. A charming man with his heart and soul into this music! He was wonderful! The world needs more Leons. All of us up there pickin' and a-grinnin' and playin' for the audience and he was doing little tapings. It wasn't radio. Just his hobby. This book is absolutely gorgeous. Did you see it, pumpkin? Oh my God, it's wonderful. I have my book, too-Pressing On by Ellen Wright. The whole thing is true! You don't make up stuff like this. It's entertaining to people who don't have this life. I know because when we played UCLA and Berkeley and the Troubadour, all the college young people would ask us questions. 'When did you start playing? How did you learn?' My daddy told him his father. Tell 'em the truth and where the music came from and how we made our instruments and how we'd dance during hard times-how the men would go outside-they called it 'going to the spring house' because the liquor was kept there and they wouldn't drink in front of the ladies!