“Trouble in Mind” is a blues song written by the jazz pianist Richard M. Jones. Thelma La Vizzo, with Jones at the piano, recorded it for Paramount on 15 May 1924, the first recording of the song, and in 1926 Bertha “Chippie” Hill recorded it with Jones and Louis Armstrong on cornet. Her version was chosen for the Blues Hall of Fame in 2020 as a Classic of Blues Recording. The blues singer Georgia White made another early recording in 1936.
The words face despair openly. Jones’s early verses speak of feeling like living one day and dying the next, and of lying down on a railroad line to let the 2:19 train ease the singer’s mind. The refrain turns the other way: the singer is blue now, but will not be blue always, because the sun will shine in the singer’s back door someday. Singers have kept adding verses since, and one bluegrass-era version has the singer taking a rocking chair down to the river, laying his head on a southern railroad track, and laughing sometimes just to keep from crying.
The song moved easily between styles. Dinah Washington’s 1952 recording was the first to reach the record charts, peaking at number four on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart, and Nina Simone’s 1961 recording reached number 11 on the R&B chart and number 92 on the Hot 100. It was recorded in bluegrass settings as well, for example by Hylo Brown and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys on their 1968 Rural Rhythm album 20 Old-Time Favorites.
