Blue Grass Champs
Bands / Ensembles
The Blue Grass Champs were a bluegrass band from the Washington, D.C., area, active from the mid-1950s until about 1962, when they became the Stoneman Family. Fiddler Scotty Stoneman, son of country recording pioneer Ernest "Pop" Stoneman, formed the band after leaving the military, with his sister Donna on mandolin, his brother Jimmy, a cousin by marriage Jimmy Case on guitarist, and banjo briefly played by Porter Church. In 1956 the band won Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts on CBS television with "Salty Dog Blues." Sister Roni Stoneman joined on banjo around the same time as well as Peggy Peterson (aka Peggy Brain) on Dobro. Peggy would later marry and divorce Jimmy. The band played clubs in Washington and had a weekly half-hour program on WTTG-TV as well as appearances on the Don Owens TV Jamboree. In 1957 it recorded two sides for the Bakersfield label, the first recording of a woman playing bluegrass mandolin. The band sometimes worked under both names, and by 1962 it had become the Stoneman Family, also known as the Stonemans. A collection of the band's 1958–1959 broadcast performances, Bluegrass Champs Live from the Don Owens Show, was released in 2018.