Billy Edd Wheeler
Billy Edd Wheeler has authored or co-authored several August House books of humor with Loyal Jones of Berea, KY, including Laughter in Appalachia, More Laughter in Appalachia, Curing the Cross-Eyed Mule and Hometown Humor. His most recent August House effort, Real Country Humor, was published in June of 2002.
The multi-talented Wheeler has received 13 awards from ASCAP for songs recorded by Judy Collins, Bobby Darin, The Kingston Trio, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Kenny Rogers, Elvis, and over 150 other artists here and abroad, selling over 60 million units.
The songs include Jackson (Grammy winner for Cash & Carter, and a pop hit for Nancy Sinatra), Blistered, The Rev. Mr. Black, Desert Pete, Anne, High Flying Bird, The Coming of the Roads, It's Midnight, Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back, Coal Tattoo, and Coward of the County, that was made into a movie.
Recently inducted into the Hall of Fame by Nashville Songwriters International, he is the recipient of Distinguished Alumnus awards from Warren Wilson College and Berea College. On December 12, 2004, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Berea College.
Other awards include "Best Appalachian Poetry" from Morris Harvey College, and Billboard Magazine's "Pacesetter Award for Music and Drama." In June, 2005, CMT voted Wheeler's song Jackson, one of the 10 Greatest Loves Songs of Country Music. The most recent cut of Jackson was by Vince Gill, with Rebecca Lynn Howard, scheduled for late summer release in 2005.
Wheeler is author of a dozen plays, a folk opera commissioned by the National Geographic Society, A Song of the Cumberland Gap, and four outdoor dramas that include the long-running Hatfields & McCoys at Beckley, West Virginia, and Young Abe Lincoln at Lincoln City, Indiana. His new one, Johnny Appleseed, premiered June 26, 2004, at Mansfield, Ohio.
His novel, Star of Appalachia, was published in January, 2004. His second novel, Kudzu Covers Manhattan / Chinatown, Knock-offs & Contraband, was published in May of 2005, co-written with the late Ewel Cornett, founder of the Famous Actors Theatre of Louisville, KY.
Born and raised in Boone County, West Virginia, Billy Edd Wheeler graduated from Warren Wilson Junior College in 1953, and Berea College in 1955. After service in the Navy's Air Force, he served as Alumni Director of Berea College, and in 1961-62 attended Yale's School of Drama, majoring in playwriting.
He has lived in Swannanoa, NC, since 1963, except for a two-year stint managing United Artists Music Group in Nashville. In 1968, UA bought his songwriting contract from legendary songwriter-publishers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, then located in New York City.
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