“Trouble in Mind” is an early blues standard, written by the jazz pianist Richard M. Jones. The singer Thelma La Vizzo, with Jones at the piano, made the first recording in 1924, and Bertha “Chippie” Hill, recording with Louis Armstrong, soon helped popularize it.
The song faces despair head-on — its lyric touches on thoughts of suicide — but turns at the refrain toward hope, with the promise that the singer will not be blue always, for the sun will shine in his back door someday.
“Trouble in Mind” crossed from blues into country, jazz, and bluegrass, recorded by hundreds of artists.
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