I'll Fly Away

My son's favorite song of all is I'll Fly Away. Song writer Albert e. Brumley wrote this song in 1932. Brumley was born on a cotton farm near Spiro, Oklahoma in 1905. As he grew up the radio was gaining more and more popularity. One of the top played songs was the song "If I Had The Wings of an Angel" The song sang about the ability to escape if the singer had wings of an angel. Escape from the prison walls and heading to the arms of his poor darling.

Brumley was in the hot Oklahoma filed picking cotton one day and started singing this song. His mind slipped to thoughts of being able to flying away one day and escape. At that moment he began to write the ever popular song "I'll Fly Away". The dream of flying away and escaping the cotton fields. The song he would write would still includes words from the original ballad that inspired his song.

The song Brumley would write would be more of a hymn. The song that was wrote in the cotton field was expressed by the personal hope of eternal life through Jesus Christ. It would become just one of a number of gospel songs that he would write living life on that cotton field. However, all of them would be stashed away in drawers and boxes and not be published.

A few later Brumley would marry a lady he met while teaching at a singing school in Powell Missouri. His wife Goldie encouraged him to mail the song "I'll Fly Away" to Hartford Music Company where it would be published in 1932. Brumley would go to work for Hartford shortly after the first publishing. For the next 34 years he would work writing for the Hartford and Stamps/Baxter companies. Later, he would form Albert E. Brumley and Sons Music Company. He would go onto to write a total of 800 songs and become one of the most respected and well known 2oth century southern gospel musicians.
   
Then Sings My Soul Book 2" by Robert J. Morgan, copyright 2004, p. 291.