K Wilder’s well-researched-and-respected radio segment “Moments in Country Music History” has reached country audiences on terrestrial radio.

The series begins with the ancestral relationship of American Country Music to that of England, Scotland, and Ireland and their mutual ancestral relationship with the Celts. Subsequent shows in the series move steadily through time to include black hillbilly music and meet the present country music scene to include star interviews.

The nine-part series on the Ryman Auditorium begins with the storied history from the days of the Civil War and ends in the current time. To date, no one has told this story on the air. Three books were read to tell this story. Two of them were first editions. One was 100 years old, and the second one was 120 years old.

Country music has never been static. How could it be? The music has always represented stories about daily life. Life as we know it to be changes from moment to moment, year to year, and century to century.

Today, the world is having a love affair with country music for just that reason. Commercial country music arrived in America with the advent of the historic Bristol Sessions in the year of 1927. From that year until today, country music has consistently morphed to include jazz, blues, western, swing, bluegrass, honky tonk, rock, cajun, pop, and new forms of music as they appear. How could it be otherwise?

Country music has always been the musical stories of the people. As such, those stories become “Moments in Country Music History.”

Kwilder’s Audio Book

Preview: Story No.19

Pop Ernest Stoneman, Galax, Virginia

Once Upon a time, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the mountainlaurels grow, there lived a man with the hands of a craftsman and the magic fingers of a musician.

One day, he was listening to the radio when he heard the recording of musician Henry Whittier of Galax Virginia. “Wreck on the Southern Old ’97.” He turned to his wife and said, “I could surely do better than that!” His wife replied in true wifely fashion that if “indeed” he could do so, then he had “best” get himself up to New York City and make his own recording. Ahhh. “Behind every man, there is a good woman”, so it is said.

Thus, in 1924 he found himself in New York City presenting his music to Ralph S. Peer of Okeh records. The rest is country music history. His first commercial recording was his song titled “Sinking of the Titanic.” The song sold over a million copies and charted on the Billboard/Variety charts, at number 3 for 10 weeks.

The man, “Pop” Ernest Stoneman, not only made his first recording that September in New York, City, he would record over 200 songs within the next 5 years. He became instrumental in the location of countless mountain musicians to be interviewed and recorded at the “Big Bang” of country music. The Bristol sessions in 1927.

Ernest Stoneman would record at the Bristol sessions and go on to have a successful 50-year, career, singing gospel and mountain music. After 1930 his performances included his wife and the 13 of their 23 children that survived to adulthood.

The Stoneman family was presented the first CMA Award as vocal group of the year in 1967. “Pop” Stoneman would pass-on the following year. The family had appeared on the “Jimmy Dean TV variety show,” “the Grand Ole Opry” and had hosted their own syndicated television series titled those “Stonemen” playing a progressive brand of country and bluegrass.

Over the years the family broke into as many as six separate family bands to record, perform, tour Stateside as well as in Europe, making hundreds of recordings, and participate in two motion pictures.

End of True story: Story No. 19 

Moments in Country Music History Book