When Case was about four years old, his fam­i­ly moved to Gus­tav­us, Ohio, where he lived the rest of his life. Case’s fa­ther was an ac­comp­lished vi­o­lin­ist, and his grand­fa­ther, a Amer­i­can re­vo­lu­tion­ary war ve­ter­an, taught vo­cal mu­sic. By the time Charles was nine years old, a neigh­bor gave him a small vi­o­lin which he mas­tered long be­fore he could read mu­sic. At age 16, he be­gan to go to sing­ing school (with­out his par­ents’ con­sent), bor­row­ing the mo­ney from a neigh­bor.

His first vo­cal mu­sic in­struct­or was a Mr. C. A. Bent­ley, a prom­i­nent con­duct­or of the day. Will­iam Brad­bu­ry’s Ju­bi­lee was the school text­book. For three win­ters in a row, Case at­tend­ed Bent­ley’s sing­ing school, work­ing on his fa­ther’s farm in the sum­mer. In 1866, Case, be­gan stu­dy­ing with B. F. Bak­er in Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts. He al­so stu­died un­der George Root, Carl Zer­rahn, Will­iam Ma­son, Car­lo Bas­si­ni, Ho­ra­tio Palm­er, Phil­ip Bliss, Lu­ther Em­er­son, George Webb, and others.

Soon af­ter Case be­gan teach­ing, the par­ents of James Mc­Gran­a­han moved to a house two miles from Case’s home, so the two young men be­came friends.

Case wrote and ed­it­ed a num­ber of Gos­pel song books in his life, in­clud­ing:

• Church An­thems
• Harvest Song
• Case’s Chorus Collection

Sources

Music

1. I Never Knew You
2. Shining for Jesus
3. We Shall Reign
4. Why Not Now?