Roni Stoneman
Musician · b. 1938
Best known for
Banjo
Roni Stoneman was an American banjo player and entertainer, a member of the musical Stoneman Family and a longtime cast member of the television show “Hee Haw.” She was widely known as “The First Lady of Banjo.”
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- Born Veronica Loretta Stoneman in 1938, she was a daughter of country-music pioneer Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman.
- Joined the family band, the Stoneman Family, in the late 1950s and played banjo in the three-finger bluegrass style.
- Appeared with the Stonemans on the television series “Those Stonemans” in the mid-1960s; the group was named the Country Music Association's Vocal Group of the Year in 1967.
- Was a regular cast member of “Hee Haw” from the 1970s into the early 1990s, where she played the comic character Ida Lee Nagger.
- Published an autobiography, “Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story,” in 2007.
- Died in 2024 at the age of 85.