poverty, with Stoneman taking whatever work he could find and trying to revive his musical career. In 1941, Stoneman bought a lot in Carmody Hills, Maryland, where he built a shack for the family, and eventually obtained a more or less regular job at the Naval Gun Factory. In 1947, the Stoneman Family won a talent contest at Constitution Hall that gave them six months' exposure on local television. In 1956, Pop won $10,000 on the NBC-TV quiz show The Big Surprise and sang on the show. That same year, the Blue Grass Champs, a group composed largely of his children, were winners on the CBS-TV program Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, and Mike Seeger recorded Pop and Hattie for Folkways. Stoneman retired from labor and the Champs went full-time to become the Stonemans. They recorded albums for Starday in 1962 and 1963 and in 1964, went to Texas and California, cutting an album for World Pacific, playing at Disneyland, on some network shows and at several folk festivals. This included an appearance at the Monterey Folk Festival. In 1965, they went to Nashville, where they signed a contract with MGM Records and started a syndicated TV show. They received CMA's "Vocal Group of the Year" in 1967. They appeared in the 1967 film Hell on Wheels and in The Road to Nashville (1967). Death Pop Stoneman died in 1968 at age 75. He is interred in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville. Honors On February 12, 2008, Ernest "Pop" Stoneman was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and in 2009 he and his wife Hattie Frost Stoneman were enshrined in the Gennett Records Walk of Fame. The first major retrospective of his musical career, Ernest Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music 1925–1934 (5 String Productions) was issued in 2008 by the Grammy award-winning reissue team of Christopher C. King and Henry Sapoznik and was nominated for a 2009 Grammy award for "Best Album Notes." The Stonemans discography Albums Compilations Singles References External links Ernest V. Stoneman remembered – Patsy Stoneman Murphy interviewed by Jerry Fabris on Thomas Edison's Attic radio program, WFMU, November 15, 2005. Early recording (1926) of When the Work's All Done This Fall. Early recording of (1926) Wild Bill Jones. 1994 inductee in the Autoharp Hall of Fame. Retrieved August 5, 2015 2008 inductee in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Retrieved August 5,