Remembering 2024’s Music Losses: Roni Stoneman

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The Great myLot Breakdown of 2025 is over! Maybe this cold weather froze it. Whatever, now we’re all back and happy that we are back. I’ll continue with the list of musicians who meant something “special” to me who passed away in 2024. Here’s the next one. Roni Stoneman I had the unbelievable privilege of PLAYING WITH THIS WOMAN at a “picking party” at the country music conference one year. One of us is a good musician, I’ll put it that way. (Subtle hint: it ain’t me!) Ernest V. Stoneman was one of the greatest pioneers in country music history. The fact that he wasn’t inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame until 2008 is criminal. (Rest assured, all those halls of fame have their issues, and some [looking toward Cleveland] have more issues than others.) It was Pop Stoneman (if you watch the clip below, you’ll hear Jimmy Dean mention that he had twenty three children…ten of them died in infancy/childhood) who helped establish what’s known as “the Big Bang in Country Music,” the Bristol Sessions. Ralph Peer got in a lot earlier than Pop Stoneman, and Peer didn’t front a great country/bluegrass band the way Stoneman did! Roni was the youngest daughter and second-youngest child in the family. She played banjo — OH, did she play banjo — and sang in the family band. As the family members died one by one (Pop died in 1968, Scotty [the fiddler Dean mentioned that he replaced one night] was an alcoholic who died in 1973 of alcohol poisoning), Roni moved to other ventures…such as Hee Haw. She was a natural for that show: comedic (many of the bands from the early days of country music were vaudeville-style set-ups, with music and comedy) and a marvelous banjo player who could easily hold her own against Buck Trent and Roy Clark. Her passing leaves one member of the Stoneman Family — mandolinist Donna — living. She will be 91 next month. Roni Stoneman Born Veronica Loretta Stoneman, May 5, 1938, Washington, DC Died February 22, 2024, Nashville, Tennessee (natural causes) (age 85) HALL OF FAME: Bluegrass (as a member of the Stoneman Family) The Stoneman Family playing down-home bluegrass on The Jimmy Dean Show in the early 60s. Sorry about the quality, but I wanted a video that featured Pop (sitting in the back, playing autoharp) as well.