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Every evangelist has a music man — a partner who leads the choir, warms up the crowd with congregational singing, and sometimes plays an instrument. For evangelist Billy Sunday, that person was Homer Rodeheaver. And Rody’s chosen instrument was the slide trombone.
As a child in Jellico, Tennessee, young Rodeheaver played the bass drum in his family’s band. But later, as a student at Ohio Wesleyan University, he began an obsession with the slide trombone, something his biographer says “would define him for the rest of his life.”
Along with his trumpet-playing brother, Yumbert, Rodeheaver briefly enlisted in Tennessee’s Fourth Volunteer Regimental Band in November 1989, and was sent to Cuba just before the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Spanish-American war.
Back home after the war, Rodeheaver continued his trombone-playing career —without the benefit of any formal instruction on the instrument. He played in his college’s band, played trombone solos on campus, performed with traveling evangelists and even gave concerts on the Chautauqua circuit.
Quieting the Panic
Signing on to be Sunday’s songleader in 1910, he worked the crusade circuit with the evangelist for 20 years. During his around-the-nation trek with Billy Sunday, Rodeheaver's famed trombone averted crowd panic on several occasions.
In Kansas a severe wind storm struck in the middle of the closing meeting of a revival campaign. Lightning, thunder and heavy rains, as well as near-hurricane winds, caused chaos under the big canvas. Winds began to pull the big tent poles. The top and sides began to sag. One of the quarter poles fell, striking a woman on the head. The crowd began to panic, and nearly everyone jumped up to run.
Rodeheaver picked up his trombone and began to play. The crowd quieted down. He was able to maintain the crowd's attention until the storm ended. Newspapers headlined Rodeheaver's action.
A similar incident occurred in Toledo, Ohio, when a section of bleachers crumbled in the armory where a meeting was being held. Again Rodeheaver's trombone saved the day.
As his reputation grew, instrument manufacturer C. G. Conn Ltd. featured his endorsement in their musical instrument catalogs. Rodeheaver took his trombone everywhere. He entertained troops in France in 1917. He played while floating in the Dead Sea on a trip to the Holy Land in 1923. He played in Africa in 1936.
Humorist Will Rogers once visited Rodeheaver in Winona Lake and reported, “Rody has slip-horned more sinners into the Kingdom of Heaven than any of the old timers with their trumpets.”
One historian described Rodeheaver’s function in a Sunday crusade meeting this way: “He strode onto the platform, strong but cherubic in appearance, his dark hair and black, bushy eyebrows accentuated by his white suit ... For a half-hour or more before Sunday came to the platform, Rodeheaver, a genial and enthusiastic master of ceremonies, warmed up the crowd, presiding over a colorful panoply of sights and sounds. In his soft Tennessee accent, he greeted delegations of Elks, Rotarians, automobile mechanics, laundry workers, college students and many others, numbering from a dozen to four thousand. He asked them to sing their favorite hymn or secular song ... Rodeheaver was a veritable one-man parade on the platform. He carried his trombone as though it were glued to his body, pointed it, twisted it, tucked it under his arm.”
Rodeheaver, a Methodist, and Billy Sunday, a Presbyterian, often joked about their respective denominational loyalties. “I know my trombone is a Methodist,” Rody would proudly proclaim, “Because it tends to backslide now and then!”
The Stolen Trombone
An incident that Rodeheaver never got over occurred on a cold February Sunday in 1952 when Rodeheaver and music editor Roland Felts were ministering at a Methodist church in Vandalia, Ill.
Rodeheaver and Felts went out to dinner with the pastor and some other friends. Since they were to return for the evening service, Rodeheaver left his trombone under the piano at the church. When they returned from dinner, the trombone was missing, and it was never found.
Rodeheaver’s biographer Bert Wilhoit reported, “This was a great loss to Rodeheaver. Not only was this the trombone that had gone around the world with him several times, but it was the only trombone he felt comfortable using.
The Conn Company of Elkhart, Indiana, had previously presented him with a new trombone. Rody had tried to use it, but the bell was too large and the positions were different. Now he took it up again, but his playing was never the same. As a result, he more often held the new trombone over his shoulder, rather than actually using it. His appearance on the platform was not the same as before.”
Rodeheaver biographer Douglas Yeo, himself a veteran bass trombonist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, studied photos of Rodeheaver with his various instruments and believes Rodeheaver owned about nine different instruments over his lifetime.
Only two remain, as far as historians can tell. One is in a display case in the lobby of the Homer Rodeheaver Auditorium on the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The other is hanging in Rodeheaver’s private inner office in the Winona History Center in Westminster Hall in Winona Lake.
Perhaps some day a third will be found — the stolen horn Rodeheaver loved to play.
