I'm gonna lay my head On the lonesome railroad line Let the 2:19 Satisfy my mind Despite the sense of pain and despair, music writers such as Adam Gussow and Paul Ackerman point to the hope engendered by the refrain "I won't be blue always ... For the sun will shine in my back door some day".

[8] One music transcription shows an eight-bar chord progression in the key of G major in common or 4/4 time at a slow tempo:[9] Another has a simplified version with the lyrics: "Trouble in [I] mind.

But I [I] won't be blue al- [IV] ways, 'cause the [I] sun's gonna shine in [V] my backdoor some- [I] day".

[3] Two years later, Bertha "Chippie" Hill recorded it, with Jones and Louis Armstrong on cornet (sometimes identified as trumpet).

[5] In a review of Hill's 1926 rendition by early jazz critic Rudi Blesh, he noted "poetically and musically it is of rare order ...

The voice sings in high register, except for the downward cadences which end the phrases; the taut, muted trumpet is very blue in tone; underneath, the piano is simple and rich".