Billy Edd Wheeler is an award-winning country music composer, winner of thirteen ASCAP Awards. Born Billy Edward Wheeler in Boone County, West Virginia, on December 9, 1932, he worked as a journalist before joining the Air Force and teaching. Performing in parallel as a singer, he turned to a musical career in 1959 and recorded for the Monitor label, while taking courses in theatrical directing at Yale University. Signed to Kapp Records, he pursued his country career, scoring several hits, including "Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back", which reached No. 50 on the Billboard pop charts and No. 3 on the country charts in 1964. He is best known as a composer for other artists, penning the Grammy-winning "Jackson" for Johnny Cash and June Carter (1968), "High Flyin' Bird" for Judy Henske, "It's Midnight" for Chuck Berry and covered by Elvis Presley, and "Coward of the County" for Kenny Rogers. Many of his compositions were covered by hundreds of artists and groups in the 1960s. He also composed musicals such as Hatfields and McCoys with Ewel Cornett in 1970, the folk opera Song of the Cumberland Gap, and wrote plays and collections of poetry. He continued to perform at festivals, played banjo on bluegrass records and produced a final album, Wild Mountain Flowers, in 1979. Back in Swannanoa, North Carolina, where he had studied, Billy Edd Wheeler died on September 16, 2024 at the age of 91.
