Roni Stoneman photo from the Walden S. Fabry Collection, circa 1965. Courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Roni had told me stories about her brother’s intensity and feral energy onstage that echoed what I had heard from many musicians who shared the stage with him, like DC bluegrass great Bill Emerson, among others. But Roni’s visceral accounts went beyond the usual superlatives, and gave a picture of a once-in-a-generation music phenom in the heat of the moment, plying his craft for drunk sailors while bottles flew.
So I was all ears when she told me about her trip to Tulsa to honor her brother Scott. It started out bad, with crappy accommodations, and got worse when she and Donna showed up for rehearsals for the induction ceremony. The way Roni told it, the event staffers snubbed the sisters like they were doddering old biddies, leaving them in the lurch without a fiddler to perform with.
Nothing got Roni riled up more than when her family legacy—especially that of her parents—did not get the respect and recognition she felt it deserved. In her later years, she became the family chronicler and preserver of mountain lore, and she kept a close watch on the Stonemans’ place in country history. In 2019, I interviewed her for a story on the Ken Burns’ documentary,.
Along with Scruggs, two of her favorite banjoists were Don Reno and Ralph Stanley; she did a blistering version of Stanley’s 1956 instrumental “Hard Times” that became a showpiece of her stage act. “I don’t like a tinny-sounding banjo, I like a big, clear tone and I like the roll where it never stops,” said Roni, who had no love for slick pickers she’d hear at bluegrass festivals. “These trained ones, that’s had all the music notes taught to them, they don’t put their personality into it.
Ola said she could tell that Roni was going through hard times in her personal life, and tried to give advice. Roni realized that Ola Belle had that same sort of uncanny gift that she had seen in her mother, Hattie, and her friend, country singer Loretta Lynn. “It takes a mountain woman to know the sorrows of people before you can do that,” she said. “It’s a special thing that some mountain folks have. Most men aren’t sensitive enough.
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