Death and Legacy
Excell fell ill while assisting Gipsy Smith with a revival in Louisville, Kentucky and returned to Chicago to be hospitalized. He died on June 10, 1921 after more than thirty weeks in Wesley Memorial Hospital. Colleagues at the International Sunday School Association, where he had served for thirty-six years, said the following of him at their next convention:
| “ | Mr. Excell will be remembered as the great song leader. Probably no man who ever lived, and certainly in this country, was more capable than he in directing great audiences in singing. He was large of body and happy in his disposition. He was never known to lose his temper or his smile in his endeavor to make the people sing. | ” |
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—Herbert H. Smith, (ed.), Organized Sunday School Work in North America, 1918-1922 |
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At least five books listing him as a contributor were published posthumously. One of these was The Excell Hymnal published by his company in 1925; it was completed by his long-time collaborators Hamp Sewell and W. E. M. Hackleman as "a fitting climax to its long line of illustrious predecessors".
Heirs sold the large E. O. Excell Company copyright portfolio to the Hope Publishing Company in 1931 which they combined with their prior acquisition of a former Ira Sankey firm to create the Biglow-Main-Excell Company. The most popular Excell compositions at the time of the sale were I'll Be a Sunbeam and Count Your Blessings.
Read more about this topic: E. O. Excell
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