Ernest Pop Stoneman sold an estimated two million copies of Sinking of the Titanic in the 1920s, helped Ralph Peer discover the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers at the 1927 Bristol Sessions, and then lost everything in the Great Depression. This deep dive traces his life from a log cabin in Carroll County, Virginia, to a self-built shack in Carmody Hills, Maryland, and a job at the Naval Gun Factory, and finally to a national television comeback decades later.

We explore the clawhammer banjo style that made him a one-man rhythm section, the audacity of a carpenter taking a train to New York to prove he could out-record Henry Whitter, and why flat-fee contracts left him with no royalties when the economy collapsed. Then we follow his family of 23 children as they sing his legacy back into the spotlight, all the way to his 2008 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

• OKeh Records shelving his first 1924 session before Sinking of the Titanic hit in 1925
• Why event songs about disasters were the true crime podcasts of the 1920s
• His role as cultural broker for Ralph Peer’s portable Western Electric recording sessions in Bristol
• Winning $10,000 on NBC’s The Big Surprise in 1956 while his kids won Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts
• The Stonemans’ MGM contract, syndicated TV show and 1967 CMA Vocal Group of the Year award