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Homer Alvan Rodeheaver (October 4, 1880 – December 18, 1955) was an American evangelist, music director, music publisher, composer of gospel songs, and pioneer in the recording of sacred music.
In 1898, he left college to serve in the Fourth Tennessee Band during the Spanish–American War. Around 1904, he joined evangelist W. E. Biederwolf as music director and then served, from 1910 to 1930, in the same role for Billy Sunday, the most popular evangelist of the period.Lyle W. Dorsett, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 1, 93–95. Shortly after Billy Sunday's death in 1935, Rodeheaver wrote a memoir of his relationship with the evangelist.
When Lowell Thomas presented Rodeheaver to the New York Advertising Club, Rodeheaver succeeded in getting the advertising agents to sing "Pray the Clouds Away". Will Rogers 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!"Wilhoit, 31, 55. 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 homecoming in Elwood, Indiana.Butterfield, 62.
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 halfway through the song, and then allowing the trombone to hang on his arm at the elbow.Porter, 34. During a Sunday tent campaign in Kansas, a heavy storm with near-hurricane winds caused the tent 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.A similar incident occurred in Toledo when a section of bleachers crumbled in an armory where a meeting was being held.
In his prime, Rodeheaver also used his baritone 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. During the heyday of Sunday's evangelistic campaigns, Rodeheaver directed the nation's largest choruses, from a few hundred to as many as 2000 volunteers in Sunday's various campaigns. To him, nothing was incongruous about having his choirs sing Horatio R. Palmer's gospel song "Master, the Tempest Is Raging", followed by the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel Messiah.Wilhoit, 24.
Rodeheaver appeared on at least 18 record labels and 500 sides during his recording career. His most recorded piece was Sunday's theme song "Brighten the Corner Where You Are", which Rodeheaver recorded 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", "Since Jesus Came into My Heart", "In the Garden", and "My Wonderful Dream".For a thorough discography, see Bob Olson, "Homer Rodeheaver, Pioneer of Sacred Records."
Billy Sunday perhaps paid Rodeheaver $80,000–90,000 over the course of their 20-year partnership,$80-90,000 was easily more than a million dollars at the beginning of the 21st century. but Rodeheaver admitted that he made more than four times that amount from other sources, especially music publishing, during those same years.Porter, 93.
In 1912, Rodeheaver bought an old farm house on "Rainbow Point" at Winona Lake, Indiana,]] and had it rebuilt to look like a ship, including adding a railing around its flat roof.At one point, Rodeheaver had a sliding board extending from an upstairs room to the lake so he could take a morning dip, but he removed it after Will Rogers wrote a newspaper column about it and strangers climbed up on his roof to use it. Porter, 34; Wilhoit, xvi, 58. There, he entertained hosts of preachers, businessmen, opera singers, and radio personalities, sometimes as many as 20 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."Butterfield, 59.
Rodeheaver never married, though he "had a few very close brushes with matrimony" and even proposed to Canadian-American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who turned him down.Edith Waldvogel Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Inc., 1993), 333. His half-sister Ruth and her husband, Jim Thomas, lived with him and served as his hostess. Rodeheaver "loved to be surrounded by women of charm and beauty, and with them his manner was always extremely gallant".Jones, Cornbread and Caviar, 95. According to Jones, Rodeheaver also proposed to operatic contralto Doris Doe, and she might have accepted, but believed if any woman accepted Rodeheaver's proposal, "Homer got frightened and ran, and I wanted to keep his friendship; so I said no." Jones himself believed Rodeheaver was never "seriously in love with any woman. He was just in love with the idea of romance itself." Mary Gaston Jones, the wife of evangelist Bob Jones, Sr., once said of Rodeheaver, "Here comes Homer with his oil can."
Rodeheaver was a third-degree Freemasonry, Knights Templar (Freemasonry), and Shriner. He was raised in Lake City-Warsaw Lodge No. 73, Warsaw, Indiana, on December 30, 1914; demitted November 16, 1934; and reaffiliated December 1, 1952.
An associate recalled that Rodeheaver was never the same after his favorite trombone was stolen in February 1952.Wilhoit, 87–88. Another of Rodeheaver's trombones, a gold-plated one, is displayed in the lobby of Rodeheaver Auditorium at Bob Jones University. The Collegian BJU, March 27, 2009; Accord Office 4: 8 (March 26, 2009), 3. Apparently Rodeheaver used the trombone he purchased at Ohio Wesleyan through his career as the music director for Billy Sunday. Porter, 33–37.
Rodeheaver was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1973.
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