“I'll Be All Right”

Description

"I'll be all right, I'll be all right, I'll be all right someday/Deep in my heart, I do believe, I'll be all right some day". Similarly, "I'll be like Him...", "I'll overcome"

Notes

Obviously, this song is a near-twin of "We Shall Overcome," and until recently I would have said that the latter was a minimal adaptation of this song. But the recent discovery that "We Will Overcome" was being sung as early as 1908, and in the context of a labor struggle at that, makes the question of ancestry more ambiguous. So I'll leave it up in the air, and simply give this song its own entry, separate from "We Shall Overcome," because of the drastically different social circumstances under which it is sung. - PJS

Cross references

• cf. "We Shall Overcome" (tune, structure, lyrics)

Recordings

• Rev. Gary Davis, "I'll Be All Right Someday" (on GaryDavis02)