Stoneman Family: Old-Time Tunes of the South - Sutphin, Foreacre, and Dickens

Though nowhere near as renowned as Jimmie Rodgers, Maybelle Carter, or Charlie Poole, Ernest V. Stoneman nonetheless stands among them as one of the primal forbearers of American country music. The recordings that he, his wife Hattie, and the preternaturally talented fiddler Eck Dunford made as The Stoneman Family in the decade between 1924 and 1934 are every bit as vital and unruly as Rodgers’ blue yodels or The Carter Family’s haunting balladry. While Maybelle Carter’s daughters kept The Carter Family alive in the American public’s imagination well into the ‘70s and ‘80s—and nearly every honky-tonk hero from Hank to Waylon on down has done his best to keep Jimmie Rodgers’ legacy alive—The Stoneman Family have remained comparatively obscure. This set of recordings made in 1957 represents some of the very best of their postwar recordings. It includes rousing instrumentals like Hattie Stoneman’s storming take on the traditional banjo tune “Cumberland Gap” and Ernest Stoneman’s fantastic performances of American standards like “When the Springtime Comes Again” and “New River Train.”