Palmer Esker Wheeler


1904-1983
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Palmer Esker Wheeler, who was born on July 11, 1904, at Millport, AL, in a four room log cabin, the third child of William David and Gertrude Jane Tate Wheeler. For the next few years, the family lived on five different farms in the community of Simmon Town near the old Pollard school house, but when Palmer was thirteen they moved to a farm near Columbus, MS. 

Then in 1922, they moved to southeastern Oklahoma, where Palmer attended Southeastern Teachers College at Durant, OK, for one year. Times were hard, so when he was offered a job with the Stamps-Baxter Company, he took it.

The Palmers had been a singing family, the children having been tutored in music by their father, and by 1924 the whole family had made music their vocation. That year, Palmer took his first harmony class from N. W. Allphin at Whitesboro, TX, and went on to have other training in music at such schools as the Stamps School of Dallas, TX, and the Vaughan School of Music at Lawrenceburg, TN, and with such teachers as R. B. Vaughan, G. K. Vaughan, W. B. Walbert, C. C. Stafford, and Homer Rodeheaver. However, to pay the bills and continue their lessons, the family sometimes had to pick cotton, work in the hay, or do other jobs of that nature. In 1925, Wheeler taught his first singing school.

Two years later, in 1927, Palmer joined the Stamps Quartet with his brothers J. E. and Roy. This soon became the famous Stamps All-Star Quartet with Frank Stamps singing the bass. The group made records for Victor in 1927 and 1928, but the Depression separated them, and Palmer spent 1930 through 1933 in Kentucky teaching singing schools, singing for religious meetings, and working with the Sunshine Quartet.

On June 21, 1929, he married Lena Bandy of Scottsville, KY, and that same year was baptized into Christ by Clarence Williams at Hugo, OK. Later, Lena was baptize by G. K. Wallace at Wheeler, TX. In 1935, Wheeler joined the Vaughan Quartet and sang first tenor in this famous group with Keiffer Vaughan, John Cook, and Jim Waits for nearly three and a half years, gaining the distinctive title of "The Golden Voice Tenor of Tennessee" in the middle 1930s, but left to teach music in the public schools.

For two years, Wheeler was Director of Music at Freed-Hardeman College, but left that work to go into fulltime evangelistic song leading. After that, he taught in more than 500 singing schools, and led singing in meetings with N. B. Hardeman, G. C. Brewer, E. R. Harper, and Foye E. Wallace, Jr. This work took him into 27 states from San Francisco, CA, to Washington, DC.

Credited with more than fifty songs, many of them for children, Wheeler edited a 1955 book Youth Melodies and Action Songs, with 148 selections, "designed for the edification of our youth, to be used especially in Vacation Bible Schools, Singing Schools, Song Drills and Chorus Work." The song of which he said that he was the proudest was the books of the New Testament which he set to music. I can also recall singing this song frequently in Bible classes and vacation Bible schools, and even now whenever I say the books of the New Testament, its melody still runs through my mind. "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; Acts, and the letter to the Romans...." The Great Christian Hymnal No. 2, edited by Tillit S. Teddlie, contains another song by Wheeler entitled "Unity in Christ," which also had appeared in Youth Melodies and Action Songs.

A 1970 invitation song by Wheeler, "Tomorrow May Be Too Late," was included in Alton H. Howard's 1971 Songs of the Church and has become fairly popular. For many years, Wheeler lived in Dallas, TX, until his death there on Jan. 8, 1983. His son, Tommy Wheeler, born 1931, and a cousin, Max Wheeler, born in 1932, are also songwiters.

Our Garden Song, 507

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1940 FHC Treasure Chest

Buried in Laruel Land Cemetery in Dallas, TX