Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community ... More

Homer Rodeheaver rose to national prominence in the early 20th century as the trombone-playing songleader for Billy Sunday. For twenty years they captured attention with city-wide revival meetings, a mix of sincere devotion, popular religion, and modern marketing methods. In an era when music styles were emerging as marketable genres, Rodeheaver created a brand of gospel music that cast an enormous influence on popular music. Borrowing from evangelical hymns, African American spirituals, and popular music, he built a publishing empire in Chicago, selling hymnals as a way to encourage community singing. When tabernacle revivalism declined after World War I, Rodeheaver shifted to other ventures, bolstered by his personal popularity in a growing celebrity culture. He started the first gospel record label in 1920, then shifted to radio, where his community sing programs ran on three national networks. Near the end of his life, he strongly influenced Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows, the next generation of evangelical revivalists. The authors explore the birth of the commercial Christian music industry and its roots in congregational singing—its early rise as a communal, populist form that would later divide into racial and regional distinctions known as southern gospel and black gospel. As the first major biography of Homer Rodeheaver, the book explores the impact of racial segregation, the influence of technology, and the consequences of commercial Christian music.