I'll Fly Away Albert E. Brumley, 1932

Albert E. Brumley said the idea came in 1928 while he picked cotton on his father's farm in Oklahoma. He was humming The Prisoner's Song, a 1924 ballad about a man in jail, and saw that the world could be a prison and heaven the release. Wikipedia and the Hymnology Archive agree that he borrowed one image from the older song. Brumley had studied at the Hartford Musical Institute in Arkansas. He wrote the hymn in 1929, and Hartford Music Company published it in 1932 in the shape-note collection The Wonderful Message. He later started his own publishing company and bought Hartford, which gave him full rights to the song. Early recordings include J.M. Gates in 1940 and the Selah Jubilee Singers in 1941. The Chuck Wagon Gang recorded it in 1948, and Wikipedia reports that the record sold over a million copies. The Library of Congress added that recording to the National Recording Registry in March 2017. A version by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch on the 2000 film soundtrack O Brother, Where Art Thou? reached a new audience, and the song remains a standard at funerals and bluegrass gatherings.