I'll Be Around (1942 song)

"I'll Be Around" is a popular song written by Alec Wilder and published in 1942. It was first recorded by Cab Calloway and his Orchestra in 1942[1] and the first hit version was by The Mills Brothers in 1943 when the song reached No. 17 in the Billboard pop charts. [2] The song has become a well-known standard, recorded by many artists.

Wilder said, in an interview with Jay Nordlinger,[3] that the song came to him in a taxi cab in Baltimore. Just the title. "I spotted [the title] as I was crumpling up the envelope some days later. Since I was near a piano, I wrote a tune, using the title as the first phrase of the melody. I remember it only took about 20 minutes. The lyric took much longer to write."