Homer Rodeheaver
Encyclopedia
Early career
Born in Cinco Hollow in Hocking County, OhioHocking County, Ohio
Hocking County is a county located in the state of Ohio, United States. As of 2010, the population was 29,380. Its county seat is Logan. Its name is from the Hocking River, the origins of which are disputed but is said to be a Delaware Indian word meaning "bottle river".-Geography:According to the...
, he was taken as a child to Jellico in eastern Tennessee and there worked with his father in the lumber mill business. Although he learned the mountain ballads, he preferred Negro spirituals because they emphasized harmony and rhythm and had a "definite religious purpose." Rodeheaver early learned to play the cornet
Cornet
The cornet is a brass instrument very similar to the trumpet, distinguished by its conical bore, compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B. It is not related to the renaissance and early baroque cornett or cornetto.-History:The cornet was...
but switched to trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
while attending Ohio Wesleyan College
Ohio Wesleyan University
Ohio Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college in Delaware, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1842 by Methodist leaders and Central Ohio residents as a nonsectarian institution, and is a member of the Ohio Five — a consortium of Ohio liberal arts colleges...
, where he also served as a cheerleader.
In 1898 he left college to serve in the Fourth Tennessee Band during the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
. Around 1904 he joined evangelist William E. Biederwolf as music director and then served, from 1910 to 1930, in the same role for Billy Sunday
Billy Sunday
William Ashley "Billy" Sunday was an American athlete who, after being a popular outfielder in baseball's National League during the 1880s, became the most celebrated and influential American evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century.Born into poverty in Iowa, Sunday spent some...
, the most popular evangelist of the period. (Shortly after Billy Sunday's death in 1935, Rodeheaver wrote a memoir of his relationship with the evangelist.)
Music director for Billy Sunday
Rodeheaver—called “Rody” by associates and reporters alike—had a genial, extroverted personality. Although he was not ignorant or unappreciative of classical and traditional sacred music, Rodeheaver enjoyed and promoted lively new gospel songs among Sunday’s congregations. Rodeheaver was a natural showman who could warm his audience with jokes and direct choirs and congregations with his trombone. For instance, he would say that his instrument was a "Methodist trombone" that would occasionally "backslide." Or he'd pull his lips from the mouthpiece and say, "Just imagine! I'm being paid just to do this!"When Lowell Thomas
Lowell Thomas
Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous...
presented Rodeheaver to the New York Advertising Club, Rodeheaver succeeded in getting the advertising agents to sing "Pray the Clouds Away." Will Rogers
Will Rogers
William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
said, "Rody is the fellow that can make you sing whether you want to or not. I think he has more terrible voices in what was supposed to be unison than any man in the world. Everyone sings for Rody!" When Rodeheaver was introduced to John D. Rockefeller, Sr., on a golf course, Rockefeller delayed his golf game long enough to sing with Rodeheaver, "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go, Dear Lord." In 1940, Rodeheaver led the singing for 250,000 people who attended the Wendell Willkie
Wendell Willkie
Wendell Lewis Willkie was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse who became the Republican Party nominee for the president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the GOP, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and...
homecoming in Elwood, Indiana
Elwood, Indiana
- Demographics :As of the census of 2000, there were 9,737 people, 3,845 households, and 2,660 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,743.1 people per square mile . There were 4,179 housing units at an average density of 1,177.3 per square mile...
.
In the days before electronic amplification, Rodeheaver quickly discovered that his trombone could be heard when his voice or the piano could not. He often led congregational singing with his trombone, switching from playing to directing half way through the song and then allowing the trombone to hang on his arm at the elbow. During a Sunday tent campaign in Kansas, a heavy storm with near-hurricane winds caused the top and sides to sag, and a quarter pole fell, striking a woman on the head. When the crowd panicked and rose to flee, Rodeheaver began playing his trombone and the crowd quieted.
In his prime, Rodeheaver also used his baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
voice to good effect as a soloist and as a participant in ensembles composed of other members of Sunday’s evangelistic team—especially duets with contralto Virginia Asher
Virginia Healey Asher
Virginia Healey Asher was a gospel singer and evangelist to women.-Biography:Virginia Healey was born in Chicago to Irish Catholic parents, who however, did not seem to mind their daughter attending services at Moody Church, then pastored by R. A. Torrey, an associate of evangelist Dwight L. Moody...
. During the heyday of the Sunday evangelistic campaigns, Rodeheaver directed the nation’s largest choruses: from a few hundred to as many as two thousand volunteers in Sunday’s various campaigns. To him there was nothing incongruous about having his choirs sing the gospel song "Master, the Tempest is Raging", followed by the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
.
Recording career
In 1913 Rodeheaver began recording for the Victor Talking Machine CompanyVictor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
, a relationship that lasted for twenty years. He also recorded for Gennett, Columbia and for his own Rainbow Records
Rainbow Records
Rainbow Records was a record label based in the United States of America in the 1920s which featured recordings of Christian gospel music, hymns, and spirituals....
label. Some of his records, such as "The Unclouded Day" and "The Great Judgement Morning," were so popular that they had to be rerecorded to keep up with demand. Other records featured Rodeheaver's recitations of sentimental poetry, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....
's "When Malindy Sings" (1916).
Rodeheaver appeared on at least eighteen record labels and five hundred sides during his recording career. His most recorded piece was Sunday’s theme song "Brighten The Corner Where You Are," a bouncy number of extremely limited theological depth. Rodeheaver recorded it for at least 17 different labels. Rodeheaver’s other most recorded titles were "Mother's Prayers Have Followed Me", "If Your Heart Keeps Right", "The Old Rugged Cross
The Old Rugged Cross
"The Old Rugged Cross" is a popular Christian song written in 1912 by evangelist and song-leader George Bennard .George Bennard, was a native of Youngstown, Ohio but was reared in Iowa. After his conversion in a Salvation Army meeting, he and his wife became brigade leaders before leaving the...
", "Since Jesus Came Into My Heart", "In The Garden", and "My Wonderful Dream".
Music publisher
In 1910, Rodeheaver started his own publishing business, the Rodeheaver Company, compiling gospel songs to sell at revivals. In 1936 Rodeheaver purchased the Hall-Mack Company and merged it with his own publishing house, headquartered in Winona Lake, Indiana. Rodeheaver employed songwriters such as B. D. AckleyB. D. Ackley
Bentley DeForest "B. D." Ackley was a prodigious American musician and gospel composer....
and Charles H. Gabriel
Charles H. Gabriel
Charles Hutchinson Gabriel was a writer of gospel songs and composer of gospel tunes. He is said to have written and/or composed between 7,000 and 8,000 songs, many of which are available in 21st century hymnals. He used several pseudonyms, including Charlotte G. Homer, H. A. Henry, and S. B...
to write songs for his company, but he also composed a number of tunes himself, including most notably, “When Jesus Came.” Around 1922, his company began issuing 78-rpm records on its own Rainbow label, the nation's first record company devoted solely to gospel music.
Billy Sunday perhaps paid Rodeheaver $80,000–90,000 over the course of their twenty-year partnership, but Rodeheaver admitted that he made more than four times that amount from other sources, especially music publishing, during those same years.
Personal life
Rodeheaver founded Rainbow Ranch, a boys' orphanage in Palatka, FloridaPalatka, Florida
Palatka is a city in Putnam County, Florida, United States. The population was 10,033 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 10,796. It is the county seat of Putnam County and includes East Palatka. Palatka is the principal city of the Palatka...
, and visited it often, singing and playing the guitar for the boys. He created and subsidized the Rodeheaver School of Music at the Winona Lake
Winona Lake, Indiana
Winona Lake is a town in Wayne Township, Kosciusko County, Indiana, United States. The population was 4,908 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Winona Lake is located at...
Bible Conference, a two-week-a-summer seminar to stimulate laymen to develop their musical abilities for their local churches. Rodeheaver traveled around the world on mission trips, and at the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
, while floating in the brine, he played "Brighten the Corner" on his trombone. Introduced to the Moravian custom of an Easter sunrise service, Rodeheaver helped popularize the concept across the United States.
In 1912, Rodeheaver bought an old farm house on “Rainbow Point” at Winona Lake, Indiana
Winona Lake, Indiana
Winona Lake is a town in Wayne Township, Kosciusko County, Indiana, United States. The population was 4,908 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Winona Lake is located at...
and had it rebuilt to look like a ship—including adding a railing around its flat roof. There he entertained hosts of preachers, businessmen, opera singers, and radio personalities, sometimes as many as twenty at a time. His business cards, living room rug, and bathroom towels featured rainbows, a reference to a line of a frequent theme song, "Every cloud will wear a rainbow/If your heart keeps right."
Rodeheaver never married, and his half-sister Ruth and her husband, Jim Thomas, lived with him and served as his hosts. Rodeheaver “loved to be surrounded by women of charm and beauty, and with them his manner was always extremely gallant”. Mary Gaston Jones, the wife of evangelist Bob Jones, Sr.
Bob Jones, Sr.
Robert Reynolds Jones, Sr. was an American evangelist, pioneer religious broadcaster and the founder and first president of Bob Jones University.-Early years:...
, once said of Rodeheaver, “Here comes Homer with his oil can.”
An associate recalled that Rodeheaver was never the same after his favorite trombone was stolen in February 1952. Rodeheaver died of heart failure at Winona Lake in 1955, aged 75. Auditoriums on the campuses of Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University
Bob Jones University is a private, for-profit, non-denominational Protestant university in Greenville, South Carolina.The university was founded in 1927 by Bob Jones, Sr. , an evangelist and contemporary of Billy Sunday...
, Greenville, South Carolina, and Grace College
Grace College
Grace College is an evangelical Christian college located in Winona Lake, Indiana. The college is associated with Grace Theological Seminary and the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches.-Accreditation:...
, Winona Lake, Indiana, are named for him.
Sources
- Roger Butterfield, "Homer Rodeheaver: A Happy Christian with One Old Trombone Is Successfully Preaching Salvation through Song," LifeLife (magazine)Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
(September 3, 1945), 59-66. - Bob Jones, Jr.Bob Jones, Jr.Robert Reynolds Jones, Jr. was the second president and chancellor of Bob Jones University. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Jones was the son of Bob Jones, Sr., the university's founder...
, Cornbread and Caviar (Greenville, S.C.: Bob Jones University, 1985). - Thomas Henry Porter, "Homer Alvin Rodeheaver, Evangelist, Musician and Publisher" (Ph.D. diss., New Orleans Baptist Seminary, 1981).
- Homer Rodeheaver, Twenty Years with Billy Sunday (Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Company, 1936).
- Bert H. Wilhoit, Rody: Memories of Homer Rodeheaver (Greenville, S.C.: Bob Jones University Press, 2000).
External links
- Rodeheaver obituary, Warsaw Times-Union, December 19, 1955.
- The Reneker Museum of Winona History contains a large collection of Rodeheaver material, placed within his restored Rodeheaver Company office located inside the restored Westminster Hotel/Hall (former Rodeheaver Company offices, now part of Grace College) in Winona Lake, Indiana.
- The Archives of the Billy Graham Center contains a collection of Rodeheaver ephemera (Collection 130), and several collections of Billy SundayBilly SundayWilliam Ashley "Billy" Sunday was an American athlete who, after being a popular outfielder in baseball's National League during the 1880s, became the most celebrated and influential American evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century.Born into poverty in Iowa, Sunday spent some...
material (Collections 29, 41, and 61). - The Morgan Library—Grace College holds a rich collection of Rodeheaver print materials including biographies, dissertations and theses, and hymnals published by the Rodeheaver company. The library also holds the Billy Sunday papers and a near exhaustive collection of Sunday print materials.