Musical Missionary

For 22 years the ablest associate of the late Evangelist William Ashley ("Billy") Sunday was Homer Alvan Rodeheaver, who played an old slide trombone which he bought for $4.50 while at Ohio Wesleyan University, led audiences in such rousing hymns as Brighten the Corner Where You Are! The decline of old-style evangelism and the death of Billy Sunday left Homer Rodeheaver less newsworthy but no less busy. Unctuous, large of frame, full of vigor at 55, he is much in demand as a speaker at gatherings of such evangelical bodies as Christian Endeavor. He runs a publishing house with offices in Chicago and Philadelphia, keeps his friends in formed of his activities in periodic news letters which he calls "Rainbow-Graphs." A firm believer in music as a religious force, Homer Rodeheaver lined up a number of young people in Korea, Japan and the Philippines in 1929, staked them to musical education in the U. S. One of these, a Korean who fortnight ago received a doctor's degree from Chicago Musical Dramatic Conservatory, changed his name to Rody Hyun in honor of his benefactor.

Last week Religionist Rodeheaver turned up in Manhattan, told newshawks about a trip he had made in the Congo with Methodist Missionary Bishop Arthur James Moore. Inviting his interviewers to call him "Reverend Trombone" or at least "Homer," Mr. Rodeheaver explained that Negro spirituals had taken him to Africa. Raised in Jellicoe, Tenn., birthplace of Soprano Grace Moore, he knew black amoor harmonies and rhythms early, claims credit for popularizing them as early as 1917. In the Congo, in which he traveled 1.500 miles by Ford, bicycle, canoe, litter and on foot, Missionary Rodeheaver played hymns and spirituals on his battered trombone, often starting alone in a clearing and eventually attracting 1,000 or so black heathens. Sending word of his imminence by their signal drums, the Negroes called him "White Song Man," dubbed Bishop Moore "Biscuit" or "Wangi Bischoff" (Yankee bishop). For the trombone they could think of no descriptive word. A practiced sleight-of-hand artist who claims he once could do with one hand a flag trick which Magician Howard Thurston needed two to perform, Song Man Rodeheaver performed legerdemain for the Africans, taking care not to let them think that magic had anything to do with it.

Trombonist Rodeheaver said the natives liked his song, The Brewer's Big Bosses Can't Run Over Me, and "they're learning the meaning as well as the rhythm of "If Your Heart Keeps Right." Related he: "I step up in the dark of the moon in a strange village. I got no guides, no gun bearers, except my little old trombone of the Lord. I slip into Walk in Jerusalem Just Like John, slow at first and then faster . . . and before long, without my asking 'Will you abide with me or sing with me?' they are doing a shuffle and a-humming, repeating just that phrase. Soon they're surprised I got nothing to sell. So I sell them, for nothing, the Negro spirituals. I got no chart to show, no list of converts, no promise of future missions." But Missionary Rodeheaver estimated he had reached 10,000 people. He would, he said, have brought half a dozen Congo boys to U. S. for musical training had not the Belgian authorities declined to let them leave.

In a lengthy Rainbow-Graph to the folks at home, Homer Rodeheaver told of a strike among young blackamoors at a Methodist mission in the jungle. Because two Presbyterian spinsters had given pants to boys in a nearby village, the Methodist converts wished pants too. Not that wish but their method of expressing it annoyed the "Wangi Bischoff." He turned down the request. But, wrote Homer Rode-heaver :

"Deep down in the heart of this Methodist bishop, remembering his own boyhood days, I know there is also a longing for pants for these boys, and I have a suspicion that he will find some way to provide them. Mr. Sweet and I were willing to furnish the pants, but we must have law and order, and one of the greatest lessons they must learn is obedience to governmental authority, and the method and proper channel through which to make their appeals."

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