Live!
Who: Roni Stoneman When: 4 p.m. Sunday Where: McLean Central Park

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Veronica Loretta "Roni" Stoneman may have celebrated her 70th birthday this year, but the woman often referred to as the "First Lady of Banjo" shows no signs of slowing with regard to her performing schedule or her lightning-fast three-finger picking.

She is scheduled to play Sunday afternoon as part of the McLean Community Center's Summer Sunday Concerts in the Park series in the gazebo at McLean Central Park.

Although Stoneman has lived in Tennessee for years, her roots in Virginia and in the Washington area go deep. Her father, Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman, the patriarch of the Stoneman Family band (Roni was once one of the group's youngest members), was born in southwestern Virginia and learned the traditional music of the Blue Ridge Mountains in his youth there.

In 1924, Pop Stoneman wrote "The Sinking of the Titanic," which became one of country music's earliest million-selling records. By the time Roni was born 14 years later, the Stoneman family, like many others during the Great Depression, was in poverty. By 1947, Pop Stoneman had moved the family to Maryland and was working at the Naval Gun Factory in the District while trying to revitalize his music career when he heard about a talent contest at Constitution Hall.

After failing to persuade his older sons, who were pursuing their own musical careers, to compete with him (they considered their father's music old-fashioned and had decided to enter the contest on their own), Stoneman built instruments for Roni and his other younger children and rehearsed with them and his wife, Hattie, for three months. The group, the Stoneman Family, went on to win the contest and its prize, 62 weekly television appearances.

Things began to look up for the family after that, and in the ensuing years the group had a successful Nashville recording career. The band was named the first Vocal Group of the Year by the Country Music Association in 1967.

Pop Stoneman died in 1968, and Roni Stoneman's greatest fame was yet to come. After a successful solo career, Stoneman, who had a knack for comedy, landed a part with the country music variety show "Hee-Haw." She played music and appeared as Ida Lee Nagger, a gap-toothed, bathrobe-wearing wife given to pestering her husband from a seemingly permanent station by an ironing board.

Last year, the University of Illinois Press published Stoneman's memoir, "Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story." The story, told through a series of interviews with Northwestern University writing professor Ellen Wright, includes tales from a lifetime in country music, chronicles Stoneman's problems with abusive husbands and examines her relationships with her children.

-- C. WOODROW IRVIN

The concert is free. McLean Central Park is at 1468 Dolley Madison Blvd.